


the law of the jungle

by thefireplanet



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Jumanji (1995), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Genre: A Moderate Burn, Alternate Universe - Jumanji Fusion, Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018, Deadpool 3, Extra Lives, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-27 09:28:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 30
Words: 71,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15021668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefireplanet/pseuds/thefireplanet
Summary: In 1945, Bucky Barnes disappears.In 2018, Steve Rogers finds him.





	1. foreword

**Author's Note:**

> **edit:** due to formatting issues, i had to re-post. [Headline: Local Girl Confused By Newfangled Technology]
> 
>  **second edit:** in regards to "Major Character Death," i say two things: 1) Kevin Hart got pushed off a cliff in _Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle_ and 2) there is a happy ending. [Headline: Video Game Gives Characters Three Lives]
> 
> welcome to my love letter to the MCU, to Bucket & Steeb, and to the beautiful art created by [hopeless--geek](http://hopeless--geek.tumblr.com/). many thanks to her for being the spark for this monstrous journey, and many thanks to Marissa & Kristina, who read big chunks of this over a long period of time and who put up with my sporadic emails. [Headline: Writer Writes Too Much]
> 
> now, in the famed words of Nigel Billingsley, "Welcome to Jumanji. I've been so anxious for your arrival..."

 

 

_“NOW this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,_

_And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die._

_As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;_

_For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”_

-"The Law for the Wolves", Rudyard Kipling

 

 

 


	2. prologue/

**(1945)**

The day before their final week of furlough, Captain Ross makes them run the hill.

It’s a sloping, gentle thing, even with something near forty-five pounds of equipment, and most of it sticking to him in the heat. Compared to the jagged landscape around Camp McCoy, or the horror stories coming out about the poor paratroopers down in Toccoa, it’s heaven.

Bucky stops at the top. He feels like he’s just now noticing the way the trees spill softly towards the flat, low buildings of Camp Shanks—the way the sky stretches, impossibly blue, in all directions. The sweat on the back of his neck cools in the breeze. His hands slide on his rifle. The chevrons on his sleeves are new; no one says anything until Dugan huffs his way around the marker.

“What gives, Barnes?” he wheezes, flicking the brim of his non-regulation bowler hat. Bucky wonders, not for the first time, how it survives inspection at all. “You look like you just walked in on Ross havin’ a good time.”

Bucky blanches. “You hafta put that picture in my head?”

“Had to put somethin’—ain’t going to be good if our new NCO’s the one who drags down the time, makes us run this godforsaken thing all over again—”

Bucky turns his back on the view. He slaps Dugan’s shoulder.

“Come on, Dum Dum. This?” He gestures magnanimously. “This is nothin’.”

“Yeah,” Dugan snorts. “Just wait until Europe.”

“Just wait until Europe,” Bucky echoes, and starts down the hill.

 

“You know, this ain’t half so bad as I thought!” Dugan shouts; the jeep shudders over a pot in the road, a remnant of one of the RAF’s strafing runs, and Bucky kicks the back of his seat.

“Eyes on the road, ya fuckin’ moron! I’m not walking thirty miles back to base because you decided to break our goddamn jeep—”

“Stark said this thing’s unbreakable!”

The front fender, under duress, detaches itself, skidding ugly beneath the belly of the car before popping up as another roadblock behind them.

“Stark said this thing is almost unbreakable!”

“If I had a nickel for every time!” Bucky shouts, elbows braced on his chair and rifle trained on the retreating Kraut train depot. A Kübelwagen peels out after them, the clunky, boat-shaped jeep shedding dirt, MG34 swinging around on its back. A short burst of bullets chews up the road. Bucky takes a quick breath and _BAM! BAM!_ shoots out their front tires. The whole thing careens into the dense Belgian landscape. It’s truncated front end crumples like paper against a tree; the windshield shatters. Everything’s illuminated by the glow of a full moon.

“How much longer?” Bucky asks Dernier, where he’s holding on for dear life in the passenger seat. The diminutive Frenchman twists around, sending a shrewd glare towards the station.

“ _Eh, si mon horloge est bonne, trente secondes!”_

Dugan hits a button on the dash and a burst of flame from the exhaust almost singes Bucky’s eyebrows off.

“Jesus Christ!”

“I thought that was a boost, you know, a boost!”

Bucky’s still trying to regain his sight when the whole depot goes. Dernier, standing up, claps his hands together and holds them out in a strange parody of the crucifix.

“ _La pièce d'artifice, c’est magnifique!”_

“Yeah,” Bucky knuckles his eyes, squinting at the fireworks, “it’s something alright.”

“See! Ain’t half so bad!” Dugan cackles as they careen into the night.

 

“Well, that was a bloody mess.”

Bucky, staring at the map behind Agent Carter’s shoulder with its cluster of triangular flags, each emblazoned with an H and none of them having changed position for the last three months, drags himself back to the present. “You put Dugan on a stealth mission.”

“Yes, I’m quite aware.” Carter’s voice is dry as a desert. “If only poor Gabe hadn’t gotten shot.”

Bucky smirks. “They dig all the shrapnel out of his _dare-ie-air_ yet?”

“One hopes. But there was quite a lot of it.”

“Poor guy. He won’t be able to sit down for a least a month.” Bucky kicks back in the uncomfortable chair, settling his grimy, gunpowdered hands across his stomach. He closes his eyes. They can only joke on account of Gabe having gotten clipped in the ass and not someplace worse—still, there’s a hot bubble of anxiety simmering low in his gut. Carter, he thinks, hides it better. He hears her settle across from him. They’re the only two at the long war table, buried deep in one of the SSR’s bunkers; Bucky had offered to give the debrief. “Anyway, worst part wasn’t even Dugan breaking cover to smash three Krauts’ heads, it was the moonlight. Moving up the timetable really,” he pauses, trying to dredge up Carter’s word, “buggered things.”

Her mouth quirks, blood red. “Yes, I know. But the Allies are extremely grateful for our work disrupting the supply line.”

Bucky gives a lazy salute to the general populace above him. “Just doin’ my civic duty.” When he cracks open an eye, head lolling against the chair back, Carter is watching him, more inscrutable than normal. He sits up. “What is it? You ok?”

She smiles, reserved. “You may act like a flyboy, Barnes, but you’ve really the biggest heart of us all.”

“And now you’re complimenting me?” His eye narrow in dramatic suspicion. “This is what us Invaders like to call ‘FUBAR’—”

“We finally got our hands on Schmidt’s last known location.”

Bucky shuts up. Carter’s never been one to beat around the bush and he’s always appreciated it—even now, as his stomach bottoms out near his feet and his face goes cold.

It’d taken weeks for all the puncture wounds to disappear after Kreischberg. He still can’t move his thumb right; they’d broken it one too many times.

“How?”

Carter balances her chin on the back of her wrist, watching the map to her left. The electric lights hum overhead. “Arnim Zola. While you were away dealing with the Germans, Falsworth, Morita and myself successfully intercepted him on his way back from Wewelsburg.”

Bucky goes cold. He tries to focus. Mostly, he manages. “That SS site?”

“Also the central location for the Nazi study of the occult.”

“So Zola went to the Germans? But Hydra broke off from the Krauts months ago, that doesn’t make any sense—”

“Indeed.” Carter folds her hands in front of her and turns to Bucky. “Unless the Nazis no longer perceive Hydra as a threat.”

“Considerin’ we haven’t heard from the Skull in three months, I’m kinda inclined to agree—‘cept there’s no way a guy with a face like that could just _disappear_.”   

“Yes, I seriously doubt the man’s ability to blend in. But Zola was very—agitated when he gave up their headquarters in the Alps. Colonel Phillips seems to believe something very bad must’ve happened there.”

Bucky tastes blood and bile when he swallows. “And what do _you_ believe?”

“I believe something took Schmidt out of the game for good.”

“Not an easy feat.”

“Not very.”

Bucky’s eyes dart to the map. Ever since Schmidt had dropped off of it, Hydra had been in shambles, and the Invaders’ primary duties had shifted to search and destroy missions carried out for the Allies. He’d sure as hell be able to sleep better if he could drop a pin in the Red Skull, maybe smash his grotesque face in a coupla times, and Zola, too—

“James.”

Bucky blinks. Peggy watches him carefully.

“You have been,” she says, “an invaluable member of this team since its formation. Your help in the organization of the prisoner rebellion at Kreischberg saved over 400 men. And that’s not mentioning your four months of front line service prior to that.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Come on, Peggy—”

“I _know_ how much finding the Skull means to you,” she persists, “but no one in the SSR would fault you for sitting this one out.” 

Bucky frowns, jaw working. When he blinks, all he sees is the Kübelwagen, and the driver’s forehead as it smashed through the windshield. The guy’s helmet hadn’t done anything.

Truth is, Bucky doesn’t know how to be quiet anymore.

“I appreciate it, Peg, I really do.” He grins crookedly. “But I’d never hear the end of it if Gabe went marching off with an ass-wound while I downed drinks at the Whip & Fiddle.”

She purses her lips. “You know, sometimes being brave means having the courage to rely on others.”

“Well,” his chair scrapes against the concrete as he stands, “good thing I’ve never claimed to be brave.”

Peggy rolls her eyes.

 

“Say, this is some feat of engineering, isn’t it? Makes SSR HQ look like it was built by a coupla mooks in the Stone Age—hand me that wrench, would you, Barnes?”

“You mind if it hits you in the head on the way over?”

“So long as you’re there to catch me, J.B.B.”

Bucky, unused to being on the receiving end of a wink-and-smile, chucks the wrench and turns to glare at Carter.

“You’re enjoying this.”

Peggy, elbow perched on the Tommy gun slung at her hip, examines her nails. “Whatever do you mean?”

“He’s wearing a _tie_ ,” Bucky says, somewhat desperately.

“I’ll have you know,” Howard pushes his bug-eyed aviator goggles higher up his forehead, mussing the pomade slathered across his hair, “it’s imported. Do you have any idea how hard it is to come by silk with all the rationing going on?”

Peggy arches an eyebrow.

“I mean,” Howard gestures with the wrench, “of course you do. I was talking to everyone else.” 

“What _I_ want to know,” Dugan, eyes on the perimeter, spares half-a-glance over his shoulder, “is how many poor animals died makin’ that collar.”

Stark scowls, patting the fur around his neck. That leather jacket is probably worth more than Bucky sees in a year. Carter says, “I never claimed Howard wasn’t patently ridiculous, but seeing you get flustered is almost worth it.” 

Bucky shakes his head. “Sadist.”

Peggy laughs. 

The low, steady stream of chatter does very little to counteract the eerie quiet that’s descended over the largest Hydra base Bucky’s ever seen. The front yard’s empty except for three abandoned trucks and some locked storage containers. The guard towers have been vacated. The outer gate, reinforced steel, has a dent in it, the metal puckered like tissue paper. They hadn’t seen a man in two hours, but there’d been an abandoned Mini Tank five miles up the road.

“You know,” he says quietly to Carter, “if our intel is bad and this is place is occupied—”

“Yes,” she moves her hand to grip her gun, serious again, “I know.”

Howard bends down to pick up the wrench and starts back in on the control panel next to the monstrous entrance. Bucky’s breath clouds the air. Above them, the mountain looms vengefully.

Jim, SCR-300 tuning in on all frequencies for potential complications, drops the receiver into his lap, runs a hand down his face, and frowns, “What’re you gonna do with that, loose a couple screws?”

“Don’t be silly,” Stark grunts, jimmying off a metal cover and tossing it over his shoulder. He nearly decapitates Monty. “This is much more delicate work.” And then, like Dolph Camilli swinging for the stands, he slams the head of the wrench into the mess of circuits. The door groans open.

“Well, I could’ve done that,” Gabe says mildly. He’s standing on Peggy’s other side, close enough to brush shoulders.

“Don’t be daft.” Her voice is brisk. “You’re wounded.”

“Yeah, Gabe, wouldn’t want you straining anything else in your—”

“My ass is great, Barnes. Can’t say the same for yours.”

“Ha!”

“While a comparison of our posteriors would no doubt be fascinating,” Monty, eyeing the sharp square of metal lying next to his foot while he rubs his neck, gestures with his free hand to the growing, gaping maw in the rock, “I do believe we should get on with it, don’t you?”

“For this one and only time,” Dugan drawls, “I agree with the Brit.”

“Well, then.” Howard shuffles sideways. “‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends.’”

Bucky shoulders his rifle and takes point.

 

The base is stuffy and deserted. More than deserted—a memorial to whatever great and terrible thing swallowed up all the squids. The metal-ribbed corridors echo with the noisy bramble of their footsteps as they kick up dust. Overhead, the lights flicker and surge unsteadily.

“Backup power,” Howard explains. “Must’ve overloaded the circuits outside. Probably a generator somewhere.”

Jim has to turn off the SCR-300 for all the static. “I don’t like this,” he mutters.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, “you and me both, pal.”

“What the hell happened here?” Dugan asks, his normal decibel cut to a low whisper like he’s afraid to puncture the silence. Like he’s afraid he’s going to be _heard_. Peggy bends down to drag a finger through the layer of grime on the floor. There’s a suspicious-looking stain not far from her right boot, the kind that inches up the wall.

Bucky knows dried blood when he sees it.

 

Stark has a minor conniption when they pry their way into the hangar, first because of the sleek, bullet-shaped planes and then because of the body he finds in one of the cockpits.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he yelps, dropping away and almost smashing his head on the propeller. Bucky grabs his elbow to steady him.

“What?”

Stark smooths his mustache over and over and over again before giving a short, aborted gestured towards the curved glass. Bucky steadies his foot against the fuselage and hoists himself up, cupping a hand over his eyes to cut out the glare.

No bullet wounds. Very little blood. Just crusted eyes and some sort of bite on his neck.

“First time?” Bucky asks, landing flat-footed. Howard works his mouth. Finally—

“Didn’t take you for the patronizing type, Barnes.”

Bucky blinks. “I’m not. At least, I’m not tryin’ to be, it’s just—it can be a lot. The first time. That’s all. That’s all I meant.”

“He’s scum.” Howard knocks the plane. “He’s scum, I know he is. Was. Hydra’s a parasite, and it only attracts parasites. It’s a law of the universe. Like gravity. So then why the hell do I feel so—” He breaks off, shoving his hands into his pockets. He could be Clark Gable. Bucky had accounted for a certain amount of absurdity when he joined the army, but this seems like a lot.

“I think that just makes you human,” he says.

 

The rest of the prop planes are scattered, fossilized mid-takeoff—their noses crushed, their bodies tipped, spilled like so many children’s toys. Their silhouettes make Bucky uncomfortable, but not as much as the honeycombed insides of a half-finished glider propped up at the other end of the runway looking about as big as Times Square.

“ _Beaucoup de puissance de feu_ ,” Jacques says, when they’ve reconvened around the hangar’s entrance. “Many planes. Many targets.”

Jim scowls. “So, they’ve abandoned a legitimate offensive. Why?”

“The fact that most of ‘em seem to have kicked the bucket probably has something to do with it,” Howard grumbles, scuffing his Oxfords against the concrete.

“Then we should be thankin’ whoever wiped ‘em out.”

“Dunno, Dum Dum.” Bucky runs the heel of his palm across his cheekbone. “I think the jury’s still out on that one.”

“We’re missing something.” Peggy is walking a slow line across the hangar entrance, taking in the grounded aircraft. “We picked up Zola on his way back from Wewelsburg. He went there for help.”

Dugan settles his shotgun across his shoulders. “No one goes to the SS for help.”

“Unless he was seeking help with the occult. Arnim Zola was never interested in Teutonic myth; with Schmidt gone, he would have to move outside the organization for answers.”

“You think the Skull woke something up,” Bucky says. Peggy watches him steadily. “You think he—”

“Schmidt was convinced that there was a great power hidden in the earth, left here by the gods and waiting to be seized by superior men.”

“—you think he found it.”

“Or opened a door.” Peggy’s nostrils flare. She takes another look around the hanger. “We’re missing something.”

“You’re damn right we are.” Stark flaps at the planes. “Modestly speaking, I’m the best mechanical engineer in the entire goddamn Allied army—”

“Really?”

“—shut up, Barnes. Look, this tech—it’s ten, fifteen years beyond my designs, but Hydra’s top scientist was Zola, and he liked to experiment on _rabbits,_ not build mega-machines. It doesn’t add up.”

Bucky shifts. 

“Maybe they were getting help,” Jim offers darkly.

“From _who_ , the Russians?”

Carter pinches the bridge of her nose. “Not everything can be blamed on the Russians, Howard.”

“Just _most_ things—”

“We should split up,” Bucky breaks in, abrupt. “Cover more ground. We can finally test those miniaturized short-range radio receivers you’ve been going on about, Stark.”

“Hey, they’ve been tested more than you, pal.”

“James is right.” Peggy takes a deep breath. “If you see any schematics, grab them. Burn everything else.”

 

Jacques and Gabe head back outside to sweep the perimeter; Dum Dum, Monty, and Jim continue the search of the hangar. Bucky can hear their chatter through the oddly-shaped piece of metal he’s got in his hand. It’s something straight out of one of his pulps—the SCR-300, except small enough to fit between his fingers. He flips it like a coin.

“Throw it all you want, Barnes,” Howard drawls, “it’s unbreakable.”

Bucky digs a nickel out of one his pockets and tosses it to Peggy without looking. “I’d be more impressed if these things could pick up _Fibber McGee and Molly_.”

“Well,” Stark sighs. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

Bucky holds it to his ear, close enough to pick up Gabe and Jacques talking quietly in French. “My little sister’d get a kick out of it, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly why I spent thousands of military dollars shrinking that clunky old backpack, to impress your kid sister—”

“Which one, James?” Peggy asks.

Bucky blinks. All the dust they’re kicking up is beginning to bother the back of his throat. “Youngest.” He swallows. “Rebecca. She used to string up those tin can phones around the apartment.”

Stark pulls his lips together, almost awkward. “Well, then, she’ll need an upgrade when we get back stateside, huh? Tin can phones. Ridiculous.”

“Hey, uh, Spitfire for Buck Rogers, over.”

Bucky drags the radio towards his mouth. “Go for Rogers.”

“Yeah, uh, we found something on the east side of the compound.”

“‘Fraid you’re gonna have to be more specific, Spitfire.”

“Uh.”

“Gabriel?” Peggy asks sharply, moving closer.

“Yeah, Pegs, sorry, it’s—we found a lion. Or,” Gabe clears his throat, “what’s left of one.”

Howard wrestles the radio receiver out of Bucky’s hand so he can say, very patiently, “We’re in the Swiss Alps.”

“Do you want me and Jacques to drag this thing over to the rendezvous point?” Gabe snaps. “Would that make you feel better?”

“I’m just saying, that’s impossible. Lions are native to sub-Saharan Africa. There’s also a small subset of Asiatic lions that can be found in India’s Gir Forest, but neither of those places are remotely close to the _Swiss Alps_.” Howard catches Bucky’s look. “What? Rita was very interested in wildlife—”

“ _Hayworth_?” Bucky sputters.

“—I had to find some way to impress her—”

“Be quiet,” Peggy orders brusquely. Bucky’s teeth clack together. Howard frowns.

“Don’t look at me like that, Peg, you’d’a slept with Rita Hayworth, too, if you’d had the chance—”

“For God’s sake, _hush_ ,” Peggy snaps. She tilts her head. Then she reaches for the radio. “Gabe? Maintain position. Gather any pertinent evidence.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stuffs the receiver in her pocket. The echo of her voice bounces down the skeleton hallway. Bucky glances sideways at Howard and then ventures, after a beat, “Peggy?”

“Do you hear that?”

Howard snorts. “If you’re talking about the sound of my own disbelief, then sure—it’s not a _lion_ , it can’t be a—”

Carter slaps a hand over Stark’s mouth, watching Bucky expectantly.

Bucky listens.

There’s the loudest thing, the tide-like sound of their breathing; and then the incessant drone of the lights overhead; and then the radio, still sparking fitfully, even muted through the fabric of Peggy’s fatigues (Dum Dum had gotten wind of the lion). And—

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

Bucky frowns, cocking his head.

_Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum._

It’s not his heartbeat but it feels like it, a deep, thrumming pulse that makes his own quicken. Howard’s eyebrows push together. He frees himself from Carter’s grip.

“What the hell is that?”

 

“Well, this is cozy.”

“It must be Schmidt’s office.”

“What gave it away—the death rays, or the giant portrait of him with his,” Howard gestures to his own face and gags. Bucky finds himself drawn towards the picture windows at the other end of the chrome room, the curved, sloping view they offer of the Alps. Beyond the abandoned Hydra headquarters, the mountains rise like the marbled, snow-covered nubs of some giant’s spine. When he puts a hand to the glass, it’s cold.

“Doesn’t look like this place has been damaged too badly,” Howard says of the menacing, industrial machines, the spotlights, the loops of thick wire, the map of the world pinned through at Berlin, at London, at New York. Bucky stares at the slopes and thinks of Kreischberg. “This machinery,” he can hear Stark jerking something out of his gear bag, “it looks like some sort of power converter. I’m gonna run a sweep.”

Bucky shuts one eye. The room throbs with the heartbeat. He feels it in his toes, in the pads of his fingers. He barely notices Carter until she’s right next to him, tapping on the glass with one crimson nail. It takes him a minute to work out the Morse code. _Short, short, long, short—short, short, long—long, short, long—_

_Fuck Hydra._

Bucky smiles.

“Guys!” Howard shouts. “I found something.”

 

The cradle is straight out of _The Time Machine_ , a dense circle of metal snaked through with power cords that disappear into the shadowy corners of the room. The shape of its component parts is intimately Hydra: slightly bulbous, sleek, a world of tubing. Inside of it, something goes:

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

Howard fiddles with the concentric rings around the top and the lights overhead surge.

“What is it?”

“Well, Agent Carter, my best guess would be the backup generator. Move a little to the left, Barnes, you’re blocking my light.”

Bucky shifts. “Is it supposed to be making that noise?”

“I’m thinking this thing’s about two minutes away from overheating,” Howard grimaces, pulling down his flight goggles. “I’m gonna disconnect the power source. I’d take a couple steps back if I were you.”

_Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum._

Peggy leads Bucky to the closest table, fifteen feet away. The shiny surface is covered by the prototype of some new Hydra weapon, a gun the SSR never had to face. The sheen of its barrel is non-existent under the dust.

They hunker for cover.

_Ba-DUM, Ba-DUM, Ba-DUM—_

“Right. Opening the chamber now.”

Bucky fights the urge to cover his ears.

_BA-DUM, BA-DUM, BA-DUM—_

A hiss, long and low, like the steady flow of air being released from a tire, and the noise, the pounding of it, rattling the stuff in Schmidt’s office—

_BADUMBADUMBADUMBA—_

The lights go out.

Bucky blinks at the sudden darkness, colored only by the pale light sifting through the windows behind them. “Howard?” Peggy calls into the abruptly deafening silence. “Howard, are you alright?”

“Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“On a lot of things.”

Bucky ventures out, following the trail of wires back to the cradle. Howard’s goggles are slung around his neck. There’s something rectangular in his hands. Bucky frowns.

“Is that—”

“Don’t,” Howard says. “I’m processing.”

Bucky holds up his hands. Very little had made sense since Kresichberg; this, he thinks, makes more of it than slaughtering kids in the field who were barely older than Ruth, who had just graduated high school.

Howard moves towards Peggy, throwing the prototype off the table with a mighty crash. She’s updating the other Invaders through the receiver, but her voice trails off when she sees what Howard sets down in front of her. Her arm drops to her side.

“That was what was powering the entire base? But that’s a—”

“Yeah.” Howard’s smoothing his mustache again. Over and over and over. “Yeah, it’s a board game.”

 

“‘A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind. You roll the dice to move your token. Doubles get a free turn. The first player to collect the Stones wins. Adventurers beware: do not begin unless you intend to finish. The exciting consequences of this game will vanish only when a player has collected all six Infinity Stones and called out Marvel.’” Howard wipes a hand down his face and breaks into a fit of hysterical giggles. “We’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, haven’t we?”

Spread out before them, Marvel is roughly the size of the Monopoly board Alice had saved up for back home, except there’s no colorful pieces or high-priced rents, just a maze of white spaces converging haphazardly on a piece of green glass in the center. Howard sniffs around the side panels for the dice.

“What’re you doing?” Bucky asks. 

“What’s it look like? It’s a board game. Ergo,” Howard shakes the dice in his palm, _clack-clack-clack_ , “we play the board game.”

Bucky’s thinking about the dead goon in the plane and also the time Rebecca and Alice had gotten into a fight over the renting out of Park Place. He shakes his head. “Let’s take it back to the SSR, _then_ you can test it. Hell, I’m sure Zola would give us something on it, the guy sings better than a canary—”

“Peg?” Howard asks, invoking the tiebreaker. Carter sighs, slinging her gun behind her so she can lean forward and fish out the what’s left of the game pieces. She holds one up to the light: a surprisingly ornate gauntlet, palm out and miniature fingers raised. Six empty slots decorate the intricate mold, four across the knuckles, one on the thumb, and one on the back of the hand.

“Jesus,” Bucky says, tipping the board in search of a manufacturer and coming up empty. “Don’t they know there’s a war goin’ on?” He hinges the side panels so he can make out the word MARVEL carved across the front and then dumps the whole thing back on the table. “Carter, you’re not serious.”

“Unfortunately,” she sighs, setting a token down. “I’d like to know what we’re dealing with before we bring it back into a highly populated area.”

Bucky shakes his head. Schmidt’s office is beginning to feel suffocating, and familiar. Howard holds out the dice.

“Ladies first.”

 

There’s a knucklebone rattle as they bounce across the board; the noise shivers up Bucky’s spine. _One—two—three—_ stop. What follows is a heavy moment of silence that strikes him like the pause on the hill above Camp Shanks: indefinable, noticeable for the way Howard smells like cigarettes or Carter smells like gunpowder or he smells like the antiseptic they’d wiped his skin with before—

“I can’t believe you rolled doubles on your first turn,” Howard mutters, breaking the spell. Carter reaches across the table to twist his ear and then down to grab her red gauntlet where it sits on the half-moon starting tile, except—

Shuddering, it slides forward two spaces by itself.

“What,” Bucky says, “the fuck.”

“Magnets. Must be—magnets.” Howard has never sounded less sure. He waves his hands above the board. “Some sorta connection with the poles, maybe—”

“Is that magnetization, too?” Peggy asks, pointing to the green jewel in the center of the game. Golden mists bleeds across its opaque surface, hardening into words.

“‘A lucky roll you haven’t earned,’” Bucky reads, “‘a gift for you with this free turn.’”

Something falls onto the board. Howard startles back and falls over. Carter blinks. Bucky presses his chin hard and then harder, waiting for the pain to follow the gunshot—

“It’s a necklace?” he finally asks. His voice is rough, but only Carter notices. Howard’s too busy clawing back to his feet. She picks up the hefty charm attached to the leather band, a golden ellipse, vaguely eye-shaped and cut with arcane symbols.

“Well,” Howard heaves, “I wasn’t expecting that. Spontaneous materialization? You know, if you gave me some whiskey and a few hours, I could whip up an equation to—”

“Howard,” Peggy sighs. “Roll.”

“Fine, fine. I was just letting you know.” Stark tosses the dice blithely. “Six.” His golden glove shivers forward as he squints at the center jewel. “‘At night they fly, you’d better run, these winged things are not much fun.’” He snaps. “Bats! Easy. What’s my prize?”

Bucky picks up the dice. “The satisfaction of knowing you were right.”

“That’s not a prize, I experience that feeling every day—”

Peggy’s eyes cross. “And so much modesty, too.”

“Look, you gotta have a certain amount of confidence if you want to make it through this goddamn war—”

Something slams into the windows.

Bucky drops the dice. “What the hell—”

Peggy swings her Tommy gun around, aiming for the cracking glass and whatever’s on the other side of it. There are four of them, bombing the windows, leathery and impossible, nothing but hairy knees and fangs and translucent wings, slamming over and over and—

“Barnes,” Howard rasps, fumbling with his Colt. He points to the board. Bucky glances down.

“The game thinks I rolled,” he says blankly.

“What do you mean,” Peggy braces against the table, “the game _thinks_?”

“‘In the jungle you must wait,’” he reads, “‘until the dice read five or eight.’”

Peggy turns, eyes wide. “James—”

The glass shatters.

 

 


	3. one/

**(2018)**

“Thank you for this.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Sharon.”

“Yeah, I kinda do.” She smiles, tucking her hair behind one ear. It’s a familiar gesture, even separated by 230 miles and played out over a phone screen. Steve clears his throat awkwardly.

“I’d have done it anyway.”

She arches an eyebrow but reaches for her mascara instead of calling him out on his bullshit. “Well, call it a favor.”

“It’s not like visiting with your great-aunt is a chore.”

“Believe me, if I could be there instead of this work party, I would.”

Steve’s pencil pauses its meandering journey across his sketchbook. When he looks down at the curve of the cheek on the page, he realizes he’d been drawing his mother. He flips it over and reaches for his chipped Nighthawks mug. The tea inside is lukewarm.

Work’s a sensitive subject, the official reason he and Sharon had broken it off: she’d come out of Columbia and headed straight for the CIA; Steve had finished up at Cooper Union and headed straight back home. Things hadn’t changed much in the intervening three years, except some time in this last one he’d had to bury Sarah Rogers in the small plot next to his father at Cypress Hills.

Steve brushes his hair back from his forehead, peering out the frosted window to his left. The view’s rote and bland: the edge of the building next door and a sliver of street, dusted white. He’s not looking forward to venturing outside. His feet are already too cold, even in the ugly fuzzy socks he’d gotten last Christmas from his—

“Co-workers that bad, huh?” he asks.

Sharon, done with her makeup, turns off the bathroom light. “There’s this one guy, Brock Rumlow? Complete asshole. You’d punch him within three seconds of meeting him.”

“I’ve been told I punch everyone within three seconds of meeting them.”

“You didn’t punch Sam.”

“I tried to lap him and ended up in the hospital.”

“Are you asking me which one’s worse?”

Sharon sets her phone down on the coffee table. Steve can hear her rummaging in her purse over the soft, syrupy sound of Judy Garland. He’s got a great view of the Christmas tree in the corner of her apartment, as immaculately put together as she is. His own place is drastically secular and messy in comparison.

“He invited you to Christmas dinner, didn’t he.” Her voice is distant. Steve plays dumb.

“Who?”

“Sam.”

He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah.”

“And you said no?”

“I said I didn’t want to be a burden.”

Sharon reappears, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Jesus, Steve.”

He frowns. “I appreciate your concern, Sharon, but I can get by on my own.”

“Fine.” She holds up her hands. “Fine. But when are you going to learn you don’t have to?”

 

“She’s not having a good day,” the nurse warns him at the door. “We had a group dinner for Christmas, but she refused to come down.”

“You don’t say.”

“She’ll probably be cranky.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” Steve is getting tired of standing in the sterile hallway of the Shady Acres Care Home, struck by the sudden, awful realization of why he’s been neglecting his visits to Peggy, “she’s 97, not six.”

The look the nurse gives him is intimately recognizable and has something to do with his “smart mouth.” He fixes his thick-rimmed glasses and tries a smile; they haven’t been all that convincing lately, but only Sam seems to notice.

“Don’t agitate her,” the woman orders, before shouldering coldly inside. “Look who’s here to see you, Ms. Carter!”

“My mind may be going, Linda, but my eyesight is perfectly adequate—I can bloody well see who it is.”

Steve smothers a laugh in his shoulder.

“Yes, well.” Nurse Linda clears her throat and doesn’t step any farther into Peggy’s shoebox room. “Visiting hours end at ten.”

“Oh, you needn’t worry, dear. I won’t stay up past my bedtime.”

Nurse Linda slams the door. Steve liberates the Holiday Nog from where it’d been hidden underneath his jacket, loose enough on his scrawny frame to hide the bottle’s damning shape.

“I find that getting older is not so very hard, except for the way people begin treating you like an absolute imbecile. Did you bring libations, Mr. Rogers?”

“I did, Agent Carter.”

“Good man.”

“Sorry Sharon couldn’t make it up from Langley.”

Peggy, standing at the foot of her bed, waves the comment away. “I’m not the type of aunt who holds holidays over her niece’s head—though when she called and told me _you_ were coming, I can’t say I wasn’t pleasantly surprised. I felt for sure you would have better plans.”

“And miss an evening with my best girl?”

Peggy arches an eyebrow, plucking the wrinkles that carve trails across her face. Her gnarled, veiny hands are folded tightly in front of her, almost hidden by the draping of her nightgown—she’s the most self-conscious about them, because they’re bird-bone thin and constantly shake. “Your apartment is terribly lonely, isn’t it?”

Steve makes the journey down the abbreviated hallway into Peggy’s room, mostly a horrible medical bed set up with an old knit blanket and several flat pillows. The ugly, off-white walls turn yellow under the harsh fluorescent light fixture; someone had tried to soften the place with framed vistas of New York, but Peggy had taken them all down, and the TV, too, in favor of a corkboard. It takes up most of the wall directly across from her mattress.

“I’m thinking about getting a dog.” He clears a small space among the pill bottles on her nightstand for the eggnog. There are only two pictures on it: a portrait Steve had smudged in charcoal on one of his visits and one of Sharon on graduation day. Both had been shoved haphazardly aside in favor of a miniature Christmas tree. The most obvious culprit seemed the nursing staff. Steve picks it up by its little plastic star and sets it on the ground. He straightens Sharon’s photo.

“Would you come here a moment? These legs of mine are getting tired.”

Steve proffers his elbow, catching her outstretched reach and turning towards the corkboard. She waves like a willow branch.

“Listen.” She draws him close. “Your mother was a sunshine soul and you inherited her spirit; you do the world a great disservice by hiding behind memories. She _lived_ , Steven. And what a miraculous thing that is—how gloriously fragile and wonderful. How absurdly impossible.”

Steve tilts his glasses so he can knuckle his eyes. “Sorry.”

“My boy, if more men cried, I think the world would be a better place.”

Steve’s liable to flood the oceans if he starts, _really_ starts, so he shudders a breath and gets ahold of himself. He grasps at something else, desperate to change the subject—settles on the thing Peggy’d been staring at when he’d walked in.

“What about those memories, Peg?” he asks gently. She reaches out, dusting a finger over the read string connecting the pushpins porcupining the cork.

“Yes, but these are different. They’re not gone, just lost.”

Sharon had told him once that her mother had tried to throw the whole thing away: all the headshots and meticulously cut newspaper clippings, all the grainy security photos and photocopied pages from books. It was ‘obsessive’ and ‘delusional.’

“And what do you think?” Steve had whispered, voice lost in one of Columbia’s libraries: blue-carpeted, warmly-lit. He couldn’t for the life of him remember which one.

“I think,” Sharon had replied slowly, tapping her pencil against the table in soft code, “that Peggy isn’t crazy. It’s just easier for everyone if they think she is.”

In the present, Peggy finally says, “I always think of Tony this time of year.”

Tony Stark’s picture is tacked to the bottom right corner, pinned up next to a bouquet of juicy headlines: TECH PRODIGY DISAPPEARS; THE PRODIGAL SON ONCE MORE; DID THE GIRLFRIEND DO IT? PEPPER POTTS CLEARED OF GUILT, INHERITS STARK ESTATE. A circled date next to them declares: DECEMBER 31, 1998.

“I thought you hated Tony.” Steve’s voice is wry with the stories he’s heard.

“He was a brat, but I blame that on Howard’s lackluster parenting skills more than anything—the boy certainly deserved more than this, you know. Becoming a disgraced footnote to the Stark legacy.”

Steve lets his gaze wander over the other pictures, everyone connected in some nebulous way only Peggy really grasps and already familiar because he’s seen them so many times: the disheveled man squinting into the camera; the pizza delivery guy singing into his cassette player; the duo caught in the act of breaking into the Stark estate by an ancient security system; the redheaded woman with the razorblade glare; the blonde man with the black eye and the bandaged nose; and the squid, the blood-red, tentacle-skull insignia for Hydra, which had, according to Peggy, been the Nazi deep-science division, though Steve had never read about it in any of his—

He frowns. Wedged between the files detailing someone named Johann Schmidt and the cool gaze of the redheaded woman is a folded picture he’s never noticed before. There’s no name, no date. The thread doesn’t even loop around it. Peggy’s silent as he pulls it down.

The old black-and-white practically falls apart in his hands, folded so many times—in half, and then half again—that the image has disappeared in places. The man frozen inside stands at half-cocked ease, dangling a bundle of rope in one hand and holding the strap of his rifle in the other, geared up for war except—

His mouth is quirking. An almost smile. Like he knows whoever’s taking the picture.

Steve’s hand itches for a pencil.

“Sergeant James Barnes.” Peggy’s voice wobbles, doesn’t match the wicked smile she directs at the picture. “A right tough bastard. He and several of his fellows helped nearly 400 men escape a Hydra prison camp at Kreischberg. He never talked about it, but I know they did terrible things to him there. Horrible things. I had it on good authority from Jim. James thought he was so good at hiding.”

“How did you know him?”

“We worked together quite closely after his escape. Lord, he had mouth on him—a flirt, too, though I never once saw him do more with a girl than Lindy. He was a gentleman at heart.”

“What happened to him?”

Peggy gently takes the picture; folds it in half, and half again. “What happened to everyone else up there.” She sets the square on Steve’s palm. “Taken, by that godforsaken—” She breaks off, coughing violently, nails digging into his arm. He flutters, useless, wondering if he should hit the call button for the nurses.

“Come on,” he says at last, shoving the picture in his pocket and leading her towards the bed. “I’ll get you some water.” Age had done many things to Peggy Carter, but it had not stooped her shoulders; he’s a good three inches shorter than her until she sits. Steve helps her settle, listening to her rumbling, wheezing breath as he digs around the nightstand for a cup.

“Steve?” Her voice trembles. “What are you doing here?”

He shuts his eyes. Then he opens them, standing with a smile and a chipped mug. It’s got the CIA logo printed across both sides. He fights the urge to throw it against the nearest hard surface. “Merry Christmas, Peggy.”

“You came all this way?” She points to her curtain-less window. Outside the snow falls in gentle waves, like the curls of her gray-white hair across the pillows. “You’ll catch pneumonia.”

“It’s been a good winter, actually. No major bouts.” He disappears into the adjoining bathroom and returns with water. She takes it diligently.

“Where’s Sharon?”

“She couldn’t make it. She sends her love.”

Peggy hands him back the mug. He sets it next to the unopened eggnog, trying to hide the awful, crushing feeling in his chest as he drags the faux-leather recliner out of the corner.

“When are you two going to get married?” Peggy folds her fingers together. “It’s rude to keep an old woman waiting.”

Steve can’t find it in himself to tell the truth, not with the hopeful, glassy way Peggy’s looking at him. “Soon, I promise.”

“What can you possibly be waiting for?”

Steve brushes his bangs away from his forehead. “The right partner.”

“You know, I was going to get married, once.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. Peggy’s never told him _this_ before. “Oh, yeah?”

“His name was Gabriel. I remember—” She clears her throat. “I remember the time he got shot in the arse.”

Steve laughs unexpectedly.

“Yes, it _was_ momentously funny.” Her breath slows, gaze turning towards the ceiling. “I was just so thankful it wasn’t someplace worse.”

“Well, why didn’t you? Get married, I mean.”

“Life got in the way, I suppose. He said—” She frowns, blinking rapidly. “He said he loved me, but that he couldn’t watch the game swallow me, too.” Her hand shakes across her mouth. “I have a picture, you know. In my closet. Would you—Steve, would you terribly mind finding it? I would—I should like to see his face again.” She breaks off, wheezing dangerously.

Steve, thinking of the curved lines hidden in his notebook back home, nods.

 

“I believe it’s in a cardboard box.”

( _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_ )

Steve taps his finger against the doorjamb, one-two, one-two, one-two, squinting. There. Buried at the back, underneath a dusty red Stetson, an old military jacket, and a collection of nightgowns.

( _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_ )

It smells like the antique place on Court Street he and his—like the antique place on Court Street, that indefinable musty quality that hangs around all things that’ve survived for longer than twenty years. When he hooks his fingers through the handle and drags it out he’s greeted by a wave of dust and has to take a minute in the bathroom until the coughing fit passes. He’d forgotten his inhaler at home.

Someone had printed HOWARD STARK 1945-19??? across the cardboard lid.

_Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_ —

Steve squashes his good ear against his shoulder, but the tunnel sound of his heartbeat hasn’t reached dangerous levels yet. This is—something else. Something outside, pounding like a hammer against his kneecaps. He glances at Peggy, at the delicate frown settling across her face, but all she says is, “I’d forgotten Pepper had some of Howard’s things dropped off. Lord, that must’ve been at least,” she pauses, trying to scrounge up a suitable time frame and coming up empty. She kneads her hands in frustration and sits up.

“Should I check in here for the picture?”

“Might as well. Howard bought a personal camera halfway through the war, it made him almost as insufferable as the Germans.”

_Ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM—_

“He would snap pictures everywhere, security clearance be damned. He didn’t have the head for war, Howard. He was physically incapable of following a single regulation, no matter how often Colonel Phillips berated him.”

Steve squashes his bad ear against his shoulder. He’d left his hearing aid at home, but right now, clear as day—

_BADUM-BADUM-BADUM-BADUM-BA_

“He said we would all appreciate his pictures someday, but after the Alps his focus shifted. Howard was always a very single-minded man. It was one of his many character flaws.”

Steve lifts the lid and the world goes quiet. The sudden absence of sound echoes with a faint, tinny ringing. He realizes he’s being rude.

“What,” he clears his throat, eyeing the box’s contents, “what did the Army put up with him for, then?”

“Oh, he was brilliant. The Army could put up with almost anything for brilliance.”

On top of the jumble of items is an envelope, the fold-over accordion kind closed with a string. Its tannish edges curl with age and use; the paper across its flap is yellowed with time. Steve skims down the side.

Steve unties the spider web-string just enough to sneak a look at the top page, the words DEAR MRS. BARNES: THIS LETTER IS TO CONFIRM THE RECENT TELEGRAM IN WHICH YOU WERE REGRETFULLY INFORMED THAT YOUR SON, SERGEANT JAMES B. BARNES, 32,557,038, HAS BEEN REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION SINCE JANUARY 2, 1945 before he re-ties the knot. The old black-and-white photo in his pocket is a testament to James Barnes’ life and this paper is a testament to his death and both things seem incredibly insubstantial. Less miraculous than fleeting. A roman candle. Here-then-gone.

Steve sets the file to his right.

Underneath he finds a globular perfume bottle glowing like a miniature sun, except when he picks it up Peggy says mildly, “Do put that down, Steven, before you level half of Manhattan,” and he can’t tell if she’s joking. He sets it carefully on top of James Barnes’ file and continues his search, unearthing a model Chrysler painted cherry red and a bowler hat and, inexplicably, a bikini; there’s _A Brief History of Time_ and _An Introduction to Nuclear Astrophysics_ and _Office Hussy_ ( _Temptation traps a lovely young wife thrust into a fast world of exciting men_ ); and, buried in the corner, an eye-shaped amulet.

It’s hefty bronze, cut across with strange runes. He holds it up to the light.

“You find this in Europe?” Steve asks, glancing back at Peggy and then immediately standing. “Peggy?”

Right before the—right before, his mother had turned the same shade of white, lying ashy and thin in the same sort of hospital bed. Steve, possessed by the sudden, horrible, irrational thought playing on a loop ( _she’sgoingtodie, she’sgoingtodie, she’sgoingto_ —) practically trips to her side.

“Peggy, what’s wrong?”

She takes in a rattling breath and he slams the button on the plastic railing for the nurses.

“Just breathe, ok? Help’s on the way, you’re gonna be—you’ll be fine, ok? You just have to breathe—”

But she shakes her head, reaching for the necklace. He lets her take it in her bird-bone hands. They shake.

“Impossible,” she breathes. “Even Howard wouldn’t be so stupid.”

Steve wishes, suddenly and fiercely, that Sam were here, because Sam’s never out of his element, whereas Steve is almost always out of his. “What?”

“ _I told him to get rid of it_ ,” she says desperately, pushing to her feet and catching Steve off-guard. She slips past him, water through his fingers, crouching with a _crack_ next to the cardboard box. “This,” she gestures to the corkboard, the faces, all of them staring, accusing, “this was for my own sanity, a reminder that it really happened, but I never thought— _goddamn you, Howard_ ,” she whispers, pulling a wooden container into her hand.

It looks like a board game. Like one of those fancy editions of Risk, auburn wood nicely lacquered. Steve can just make out the square letters carved across the front.

MARVEL.

Peggy puts a hand to her forehead. She shuts her eyes. When she opens them they are dark and brown and entirely present. She stands.

“Steven, I hate to ask this of you, but my list of acquaintances is woefully short—if I were not so tired, or so bloody _old_ , I would certainly do it myself.”

She thrusts the game into his hands. He fumbles it against his chest.

“I trust you to do the right thing.”

“Peggy.” How the hell did Sam do this, when Steve managed to work himself up over nothing—“Peggy, it’s ok. It’s ok, it’s just a board game—”

“You must not believe that, Steven, you _mustn’t_. This game, it swallows people. If left unchecked, I’ve no doubt it could swallow the world—”

The front door opens to reveal the stern face of Nurse Linda. She kicks the glowing perfume bottle on the way up the hall; it shatters. Manhattan isn’t leveled, but whatever’s inside begins to slowly eat away at the paint.

“I told you not to agitate her!”

“For God’s sake, Linda, I am _in the room_ —”

“Kate! Get me a shot of that sedative—”

Peggy draws him close with an iron grip. “Destroy it. Steve, promise me.”

Steve returns her steady gaze.  

“I promise.”

 

 

 


	4. two/

When he gets home he puts the game on the coffee table and wakes up twelve hours later with a fever and a bad cough that’s settling nicely because the universe enjoys proving him wrong. It’s all he can do to call in sick to Artist & Craftsman ( **WILLIAM KAPLAN: please feel better soon, Mr. Rogers, you know the other managers are dicks!** **[10:13 A.M.]** ; **WILLIAM KAPLAN: *dictators** **[10:14 A.M.]** ) and try to stay hydrated. Three days later, when it still feels like he’s got a swamp in his lungs, he manages to drag himself to the emergency room.

The whole process is fairly routine. He doesn’t think to text Sam until he’s been discharged the next day, and by that point Sam’s already figured it out on his own.

“So, hear me out. It’s four days after Christmas and I still haven’t heard from my best friend. I’m thinking—ok, so he had too much eggnog, forgot I offered him leftovers and a place to watch that boring ass World War II documentary he likes so much. That’s fine. He’s probably in a minor food coma, like me. Probably needs some alone time. S’cool. He’d text me if something was wrong. He’s not an _idiot_.”

Sam Wilson is leaning against the hood of his red Mustang, parked along the short-term curb just out front of New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist. Steve fixes his knapsack, already feeling the December chill settling back into his bones. A new bottle of antibiotics rattles in his pocket.

“But then I find out he’s in the hospital for pneumonia, which he apparently caught from not bothering to respect Mother Nature. And who do I find this out from?” Sam catches the bag Steve throws at him. “The _nurse_ working the _emergency room_.”

“Melissa?”

“No, Claire.” Sam slams the trunk as Steve slides into the passenger seat. “You sound horrible, don’t try to change the subject.”

“Have you asked her out yet?”

Sam drops inside. The ignition catches. He cranks up the heat.

“Nice try. You would’ve taken the subway home if I hadn’t caught you, huh?”

“It’s not like I’ve never taken the subway before.”

“No, see, now you’re doing that thing where you’re being a little shit on purpose.”

Steve grins, settling in as Sam peels out into afternoon traffic. He inches his fingers towards the weak sunlight spilling in through the tinted windshield. “I meant to call.”

“Ha! You _meant_ to _call_. And by the way, when were you going to tell me you’re number one on Shady Acres’ no fly list?”

“Huh?”

“Peggy’s retirement home, man. They’ve banned you. Like, I didn’t think it was possible to be banned from a _retirement home_ , but somehow you’ve managed it—”

Steve frowns. “Why’d you call Shady Acres?”

“Because Sharon called me. You know, it’s that thing, that friends do? She said you weren’t picking up the phone, and that she wanted to know how your visit with Peggy went before she dropped off-grid for some classified CIA crap.” Sam shakes his head. “The answer to which was _great_ , apparently—”

“Is Peggy ok? I meant to check up on her, but this hit pretty fast—”

“She’s more stubborn than God, so yeah, she’s fine. That’s about all I got out of the staff before they hung up on me. You gonna tell me what happened?” Sam pauses. “God, please tell me you didn’t punch a nurse.”

“I didn’t punch a nurse,” Steve agrees, watching the tall press of buildings slip by on either side and deftly ignoring Sam’s question. All he can see is Peggy’s haunted, determined face. She’d been so _sure_. He doesn’t want to take that away from her.

Besides, it wouldn’t be so hard to toss the game off the Brooklyn Bridge.

They pull up to a red light, engine idling. Sam taps his fingers on the wheel.

“Look, Steve,” he finally says. “I know you’ve got a chip on your shoulder the size of New York, but—and don’t freak out ok—you have _friends_.” One eyebrow’s cocked in disbelief. “Yeah, it’s crazy. Don’t ask me why people seem to like you, I have no idea.”

The light changes but the traffic’s so bad they have to wait behind the crosswalk; Steve leans his foggy head against the window, listening to the gunk still rattling around in his chest.

“Look, I’m just making sure on the friend thing. Because I feel like you forget it every two hours. You’re reliable that way. Like a goldfish.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

“For calling you a goldfish?”

“Yeah,” Steve answers after a beat. “For calling me a goldfish.”

Sam reads between the lines.

“Don’t mention it.”

 

“—Christine Everhart, here at the site of the Hammer Expo in Queens and joined by the CEO of Hammer Industries himself, Justin Hammer. Mr. Hammer, what are you most excited for guests to experience at this multi-acre exposition?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s fair, Christine, to reduce the Hammer Expo to one single thing. This will be a multi-sensory, immersive World’s Fair where we will be able to show off some of America’s greatest advancements in robotics. But you know, who am I kidding—it’s the flying cars. Definitely the flying cars.” 

Steve, elbows deep in the pile of dirty dishes he’d been neglecting, watches Justin Hammer shoot fingers guns at an invisible audience from the TV screen.

“And what would you have to say to critics who are implying that this is nothing but a calculated response to your falling stock prices in the face of growing Wakanda Industries?”

Steve grins. Christine Everhart smells blood. Good. If anyone deserves the bad press it’s Hammer, who practically runs the US war machine and just recently declared his support for the LGBTQ community by refusing to hire anyone who identified as anything other than the sex they were assigned at birth.

“Uh, what I would say to that is, I would say: Wakanda Who?”

The doorbell rings.

“Some would also say that this show is a colossal waste of manpower and money. You plan on keeping the Hammer Expo open for a full year, during which time the city of New York will have to fork out millions in overtime pay for police officers alone—”

“Look, it’s—are you here to talk about the flying cars, or are you here to lambast me, ‘cause I don’t think we have enough time for both—”

“Furthermore, how would you address accusations that you’re banking on the memory of the Stark Expo—a biennial event held up until the disappearance of Tony Stark in 1998—to draw in more crowds?”

_Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock_.

“Just a second!” Steve shouts, or tries to—mostly it’s a wheeze that scratches up his throat and threatens another coughing fit. By the time he turns off the water Sam’s already uncovered the spare key. 

“Man, what the hell are you doing up?”

“Cleaning.” He catches Sam’s look. “I’m _fine_.”

“I would say that Tony Stark is gone, and, uh, he’s been gone for, what, nineteen, twenty years now?” Justin Hammer squawks. “Come on, honey, it’s time to move on—”

Christine Everhart gestures behind her. “You’ve even chosen the former Stark Expo site as the location for the Hammer Expo.”

“Are you accusing me of—pandering to—”

“How would you respond to those who say Tony Stark’s disappearance is still dictating your current business model?”

“Ok, first of all, let’s call a spade a spade—his _murder_. Of which I had no part, just like I told detectives. I mean, come on, we all know the girlfriend did it so she could live in that fancy mansion without him yakking her goddamn ear off—but that’s—ha, that’s neither here nor—it’s—look, it’s not the _Stark_ Expo. This is about what Hammer Industries can do for the public, so—you know what? No more questions. Get this mic off of me—get that camera out of my face, you don’t see me following around people like parasites—”

“And that was CEO of Hammer Industries, Justin Hammer. The Hammer Expo is scheduled to open at midnight tonight with—”

Sam turns off the TV.

“I was watching that,” Steve says mildly.

“Nu-uh. I brought guests.”

“Good thing I cleaned, then.”

Sam is unamused, but Steve doesn’t have time to appreciate just how unamused because he’s too busy being tackled against the kitchen counter by five-feet-something of familiar exuberance.

“Shuri?” he blinks, and she leans back, grinning.

“Very good! Object recognition is the first step on your road to recovery—”

“Shuri,” T’Challa warns, stepping into the apartment and politely toeing off his shoes by the door. A plastic bag swings from one hand. “Let him breathe.”

“I am!” The bulky canvas bag she’s carrying over one shoulder bounces into Steve’s elbow. “We come bearing gifts, but don’t worry, they aren’t the Greek kind—”

“You guys didn’t have to bring anything,” Steve says, feeling a little overwhelmed as Shuri ushers him towards the couch.

“We _wanted_ to. There’s a difference.”

“You should not be excluded from New Year’s Eve festivities just because you cannot make the party tonight.”

“My brother keeps calling it a party, but he _also_ keeps failing to mention that it is a _cocktail_ party—it will be very boring, Steve, you won’t be missing anything. Now,” she throws him onto the couch and peers around his apartment, “where is your booze?”

T’Challa chokes. “Ay, you are sixteen! Stop it! One semester at MIT does not make you an adult—”

“Joking, joking! You are too _easy_ , Brother—but you know, I do have an idea of how you can improve your party.” Shuri pauses dramatically. “ _Battle robo_ —”

“No,” T’Challa deadpans. “Not after last time.”

Shuri mutters something under her breath before going to raid the kitchen. Sam sits opposite Steve on the threadbare couch and T’Challa lowers himself into the cracked leather armchair just to the left of it.

“Nice to know college hasn’t change her,” Sam says wryly. T’Challa snorts.

“No, but believe me, she has several ideas on how to change college.” He reaches into his plastic bag and pulls out a thick wool scarf in shades of bright red and blue, which he throws, without ceremony, at Steve’s head. “There. So you may never catch pneumonia again.”

“T’Challa, I can’t—”

Sam takes the fabric and wraps it around Steve’s neck. “Shut up and say thank you.”

Steve shuts up and says, “Thank you.”

 

“—picking up Nakia from JFK and T’Challa froze so badly that he caused a luggage pile-up by the exit—”

“Freeze!” T’Challa scoffs. “I did not freeze.”

“Sure, Jan.” Shuri slides across the hardwood in her socks. She’d found some old M&Ms in the pantry and is currently eating them out of Steve’s Tommy Wiseau mug. “If the Titanic would have hit you just then, it would’ve sunk. Okoye will back me up on this.”

Steve buries a laugh in his scarf but it quickly dips into a cough. The room falls silent until he catches his breath. Outside the sun is waning, the sliver of sky painted in shades of sorbet: pink and orange, a distant purple.

He’s had this body for too long to really hate it anymore, but sometimes he wishes it wasn’t quite so broken down at twenty-four.

“You laugh,” T’Challa finally says, a little defensive, “but I think you’ve become jaded in your singlehood. You’ve forgotten what it feels like to look at the sun.”

“Oh my God,” Sam wheezes, draping his arm over his eyes. “Punch me if I ever get that bad.” He peers at Steve. “Will you punch me if I ever get that bad?”

Steve shakes his head. “I can’t do it, Sam. You’re my friend.”

“You’ve never had a problem punching people before!”

“Hey, Steve, what’s this?”

Steve shuts his mouth. Shuri, who had found her way over to the messy bookshelves on either side of the TV, is now crouched low in front of the coffee table.

“‘Marvel’?”

“Uh.” Steve wonders why he can suddenly feel his heartbeat in his fingertips. He fixes his glasses. “It’s a board game. Peggy gave it to me.”

“A board game! Why didn’t you say anything earlier, we could have been playing _and_ roasting my brother—”

“You are the worst.”

“Why did Peggy give you a board game?” Sam asks quietly as T’Challa and Shuri continue their good-natured ribbing. Steve brushes his bangs across his forehead, thinking of her wild-eyed look of fear as she had thrust it into his hands.

“I don’t know.”

“Huh.”

He holds his breath as Shuri flips open the side panels, but there’s nothing unusual hidden underneath: just a maze of white spaces, empty except for the three occupied by red, gold, and silver tokens.

“‘A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind,’” Shuri reads, and then tries to pry the silver gauntlet from its spot. It holds fast. She sets down her mug of chocolate and tries again. “T’Challa,” she orders after a beat, but not even he can force the tokens from their spaces on the board.

“Magnets?” Sam suggests. Steve shifts uncomfortably.

“Magnets!” Shuri frowns. “No, of course it’s not magnets, this is _wood_. There is nothing magnetic about wo—hey!”

T’Challa shuts the panels. “As interesting as this defective board game is,” he looks apologetically at Steve, “we should get going.”

Shuri knocks on Marvel, frustrated. “Fine, fine.” She doesn’t move.

“ _Shuri_.”

“Yes! Yes, alright—but I need to give Steve something first.”

 

Shuri insists on meeting the boys at the car; before Sam follows T’Challa out onto the landing, he drags Steve into a hug.

It’s nice, being hugged. Steve can’t remember the last time he was. Or he can and doesn’t want to. Sam smells like Old Spice, and Steve’s forehead hits the middle of his chest.

“Happy New Year, man.”

“It’s not midnight yet.”

“Sue me.”

“Sure.”

Sam steps back. “This year’s gonna be better, ok? We’re gonna make it better.” He ducks into the hall. “I’m calling you at midnight, you better pick up your goddamn phone.”

 

There’s a clunky gray-and-purple box perched on top of Marvel. Shuri’s now-empty canvas bag is sprawled across the other half of the coffee table. Steve almost laughs.

“Is that a Super Nintendo? I used to have one. I’d play it when I was sick, which was,” he winces at the irony, “a lot.”

Shuri finishes plugging it into the back of the TV. “I figured it would be a good distraction.”

Steve eyes the familiar controller, the flat, oblong plastic with a directional pad and four purple buttons: A, B, X, Y.

“I found it in a box of my brother’s old things. This game, _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,_ ” she taps the huge cartridge sticking out of the console, the paper label so faded he can barely make out the stylized bird logo, “it used to be his favorite, so I decided for the holidays I would rewrite some of the code and personalize an avatar for him.”

She sits down on the couch, patting the space next to her.

“The mechanics are fairly simple—you get three lives, you can jump, or throw, or glide. That sort of thing.” Shuri scrunches up her nose as she turns it on. “I don’t really understand what my brother saw in it.”

“Maybe the story was good?”

“A secret organization working to keep the world safe from the evil Advanced Idea Mechanics? Bah. Boring. I’ve seen it.”

His TV flickers to life. 

 

**AGENTS of S.H.I.E.L.D.**

**CHOOSE your CHARACTER**

 

**> FALCON: Ornithologist – Pilot**

**> CAPTAIN AMERICA: Super Soldier – Master Strategist **

**> MARIA HILL: Spy – Killer of Men**

**> SCARLET WITCH: Magician – Avenger **

**> BLACK PANTHER: King of Wakanda – International Explorer  **

**ENTER CODE: _ _ _ _ _ _**

 

Steve grins. “Black Panther, King of Wakanda and International Explorer.”

“Good, right?” Shuri cackles. “You _know_ how much my brother loves cats.” 

“When are you going to let him play it?”

“Eh.” She waves her hand. “There’s always room for improvement—plus I haven’t completed a run-through yet. That’s where you come in.”

Steve catches on. “You want me to test it.”

“I want you to test it.” She pulls a crumpled piece of paper from her bag. “I’ve made a list of all the things you should note—general mechanics, of course, a few bits of level design. Nothing too complicated.” She pauses, looking abruptly shy. “I don’t mean to thrust this on you, I just thought—well, when I don’t feel well, it helps me to be doing something.”

Steve smiles. “I think it’ll definitely help, Shuri. Thank you.”

She shakes herself back into her usual confidence. “You’re thanking me? I should be thanking you! You are saving me precious hours. Besides, more eyes will mean less time T’Challa has to spend away from his fursona—”

Steve grimaces. “Why would you say that.”

“You mean why would I say something so controversial, yet so brave? Because I am controversial, yet also brave.” She stands up. “I better go. I’ll be back for the game.”

“I know.”

“Well, yes,” she points to Marvel, “but that one, too.” She frowns, folding her hands into her pockets. “There’s something not quite right about it.”

 

He dreams.

He watches his body where it’s wedged into the corner of the sofa, listening to the high-pitched whine escaping from his lugs. He touches the sharp point of his chin, the prominent clavicle. His arm cuts the air like glass. Behind him, someone says, “Brilliant, isn’t it?” The voice is deep, but it has Peggy’s cadence, her familiar, crisp vowels. “The Army could put up with almost anything for brilliance.”

A man stands on the opposite side of the coffee table, a bunch of rope in one hand and the strap of his rifle in the other, face a foggy distortion. He drops both to reach down and pluck the silver gauntlet like Excalibur from the open Marvel game board.

“You’re dead,” Steve says. His voice kaleidoscopes through the room, bouncing off unfamiliar walls and corners.

“Darling,” Peggy answers, stepping out of 1945 with carefully victory rolled hair and blood red lips, “so are you.”

Steve wakes up, an echo ( _destroy it_ ) floating out of reach and a giant crick in his neck. He groans, blinking groggily. The light from the cable box tells him it’s 11:30. He fumbles for the TV remote.

Times Square is flooded with tourists, all their anxious faces turned towards the ball. He wonders how T’Challa’s cocktail party is going. He wishes he were anywhere but this stuffy apartment. He wants desperately to talk to Peggy.

He turns on Shuri’s game instead. It should keep him awake until Sam calls.

The dull roar of the New Year’s crowd gives way to tinny, 8-bit spy music. Steve knuckles his eyes and reaches for his glasses.

 

**MARVEL**

**CHOOSE your CHARACTER**

 

**> FALCON: Ornithologist – Pilot**

**> CAPTAIN AMERICA: Super Soldier – Master Strategist **

**> MARIA HILL: Spy – Killer of Men**

**> SCARLET WITCH: Magician – Avenger **

**> BLACK PANTHER: King of Wakanda – International Explorer  **

**ENTER CODE: _ _ _ _ _ _**

He thumbs thoughtfully down the character list. He hits A.

 

**You Chose CAPTAIN AMERICA.**

**Begin Game?**

 

**> Yes                                        No**

 

 

 


	5. three/

Steve falls into a pile of garbage. He can’t figure out if it’s a metaphor.

It sounds like a bunch of empty water bottles rattling around the recycling bin at his apartment; it feels like getting punched. For a long second he’s frozen, tangled up in blue—blue sky, blue trash, blue pants—and then a man clips through the junk near his shoulder and says, very pleasantly, “Hello.”

Steve starts, scrambling back. The garbage gives way, and then his feet tip over his head, and then he doesn’t stop until he hits solid ground, the junk—pieces of tubing and copper wires, colorfully painted wings and clunky engines—scattering to either side of him. He tries to catch his breath and realizes he doesn’t have to; his lungs are fine and swamp-less. 

He frowns.

The quality of light reminds him of spring mornings back home, bright and impossibly vibrant. Except, wait. Not _back home_. Why the hell’s he thinking that? This is a dream. It’s gotta be a dream.

It’s warm, though. And that _smell_ —

“Hello,” the same pleasant voice intones as the same pleasant man appears above him. He’s got an equally amiable face, a bland smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, an earpiece and a name badge that Steve can’t read because the glare from the sun’s too bad.

“Uh.”

“Welcome to Marvel, Captain America. I can’t tell you what an honor it is to meet you.”

Steve squints.

“My name is Agent Phil Coulson. I’m with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

“The Strategic—”

“S.H.I.E.L.D., for short.”

“—right.” Like Shuri’s video game. Dream-logic.

“We’ve been anxiously awaiting your arrival. As you know, we’ve been dealing with a—bit of a situation. Several of our agents have already infiltrated Sakaar under Deep Shadow conditions, but none have been able to outwit the Grandmaster—”

Steve sits up and gets distracted, because _this_ is what his subconscious drags up? Six-feet of pure muscle? Hilarious. And what the hell is he _wearing_?

“—need you to retrieve the map before any—unsavory characters can get their hands on it. It’s the only hope we have of defeating Marvel. The safety of the world is at stake, Captain, and I don’t say that lightly.”

The fabric bends stiffly as he gets to his feet. He cups a hand over his good ear, leaning his bad one toward Agent Coulson.

“Say that again.”

“We’ve been anxiously awaiting your arrival,” the man repeats dutifully. “As you know, we’ve been dealing with a—bit of a situation. Several of our agents have already infiltrated Sakaar under Deep Shadow conditions—”

Steve drops his hand. Dream-logic had even bothered to fix his ear.

“—unsavory characters can get their hands on it. It’s the only hope we have of defeating Marvel. The safety of the world is at stake, Captain, and I don’t say that lightly. But if you can find our agents, and work together, you should be able to defeat the Grandmaster.”  

Steve messes with one of the ridiculous zippers cutting up his thigh. “Mind telling me why the stars and stripes?”

“You’re the greatest war hero who ever lived.”

“Greatest war hero, huh?” Steve tries to flex his hands in the bulky red gloves. Sam’s leaving for Basic in two weeks. This all seems a bit Freudian.

“Of course. You’re Captain America. The world’s first and only Super Soldier. You were created by Dr. Abraham Erskine during World War II to help the Allied forces fight the Nazis, but your plane went down over the Arctic. You were frozen for seventy-five years until S.H.I.E.L.D. pulled you out of the ice. Now you’re one of Director Fury’s top agents.”

Dr. Erskine was a real scientist but he never got to make his Super Soldier, because he died at his extraction point near the Belgium border. The Nazis had been unsuccessful in replicating his research. It seems kind of pointless to point that out to such a pleasant man in such a weird dream, though, so Steve keeps his mouth shut, moving to brush his bangs from his forehead and finding another victim instead: his hair is shorter now, and blonder. He sighs. That seems unnecessary.

The glare of the sun catches the heaps of gleaming metal, drenches the muddied and folded bits of fabric; something hovers fast and low across the distant horizon, angling towards the jagged points of cobbled-together skyscrapers. Steve can’t pinch himself in these gloves.

“Do you have anything a little less—conspicuous I can wear for the,” Steve pauses, “mission?”

“All your gear can be found in your inventory, which can be accessed through your S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued communicator located in your left ear.”

Steve reaches up. Sure enough, there’s a sleek piece of plastic where his hearing aid would normally sit. He taps it once. A holographic menu coalesces in front of him, hanging midair like a picture frame.

 

**INVENTORY**

** >MELEE WEAPONS     RANGED WEAPONS     DEFENSIVE WEAPONS     ARMOR     KEY ITEMS**

 

Steve slides through MELEE and RANGED and into DEFENSIVE. His subconscious had royally fucked him over by only equipping him with a single, extremely patriotic shield, but he supposes it’s better than nothing. He drops into the next category.

 

**INVENTORY**

**MELEE WEAPONS     RANGED WEAPONS     DEFENSIVE WEAPONS >ARMOR     KEY ITEMS**

 

Well, at least he’s got _fifty_ different suits to choose from. He clicks on the first one— **TOURING (1943)** —and grimaces at the image that pops up in-frame: the gaudy cloth costume with huge red boots and little white wings sewn onto his cowl.

Ok, forty-nine different suits.

“May I suggest your **STEALTH** suit?” Agent Coulson offers politely, slightly blurred from the other side of the menu. “Plus-53 endurance, plus-75 stealth, and an added health bonus make it one of the strongest in your inventory.”

Steve hits **EQUIP**.

 Between one blink and the next, the bright blue of his suit is replaced with a more sedate navy; there’s no white to speak of, just a silver star emblazoned across his chest. He flexes his hands, grateful for the leather gloves, and taps his earpiece. The menu disappears.

“Thanks.” He looks up. “How ‘bout you run that mission by me one more time?”

“It’s all been documented in your Mission Briefing. Perhaps you should take another look?”

“I don’t think I received a—ok,” Steve finishes, suddenly holding a manila envelope embossed with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo, the same one that’d been on the front of the game cartridge: a bird, its outstretched, stylized wings. He glances up at Coulson and carefully opens to the first page.

 

**FM: Fury, Nicholas J., S.H.I.E.L.D. Command Operations, Helicarrier Base**

**TO: STRIKE TEAM LEADER CAPTAIN AMERICA**

**MISSION ORDER 32557038**

**SITUATION**

**Before time itself, ancient beings known as—**

“You should read it out loud,” Coulson says. Steve glances up and clears his throat self-consciously.

“Before time itself—”

The landscape shifts. Steve stumbles forward, disoriented, as the mountains of garbage turn into bits of holographic sand and crumble away. Overhead, someone pokes a hole in the sky and galaxies bleed through. He almost laughs.

It’s a _cutscene_. Of course.

“—ancient beings of immense power known as Celestials created the universe,” a deep, no-nonsense voice continues. Against the backdrop of stars appear nine figures, immensely, improbably huge, faceless and disturbingly blank. “They hoped to cultivate perfection. But they couldn’t contain life.”

The giants disappear, replaced by a multitude of beings—walking trees, crystalline figures, humanoids painted gold and blue and green.

“Their creation grew too large, too quickly. In an effort to prune the unworthy from the World Tree, the Celestials crafted Marvel, a game designed to test the ingenuity and strength of those species who encountered it.”

A comet falls. A discovery is made.

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

“They placed within the game six Infinity Stones, powerful ingots formed from singularities at the Beginning that could only be wielded by beings of extraordinary strength.”

Connected circles flicker into life overhead, screens showing images almost too fast to track—a luminescent cube, a magnetic curl of red matter; one of the ancient, faceless beings slamming a purple-topped staff into the ground and annihilating an entire planet.

“The game mowed down civilizations like wheat in a field. No one, it seemed, was worthy.”

The images shift, come together: a planet, greener than earth, its large continents cut by rivers and then destroyed by a thrum of light.

“It consumed entire worlds, collecting only the strongest, the most interesting examples of life for its masters to eventually examine—cities, landscapes. People.”

Steve finds himself face-to-face with a stoic man whose firmly planted feet and parade rest hands scream military; his one good eye roves the stars before coming to rest on Steve’s face.

“Marvel has found its way to Earth, Captain. Unless we find the six Infinity Stones and beat the game, I don’t think I need to tell you what comes next.”

A blocky, square ship cuts overhead, belching puffs of steam from its belly and blowing away the cutscene until all that’s left is the garbage and Agent Coulson. The engines whine in protest as it hovers to a slow, grinding halt on the somewhat-even ground twenty feet away.

“Captain America.” Agent Coulson smiles amiably. “Remember. If you wish to leave the game, you must collect the Stones and call out its name.”

“Wait—”

But Coulson vanishes as fast as the cutscene, as immediate as the snuffing out of a flame. Steve sucks in a breath, hooking his thumbs over his utility belt and turning towards the newcomers spilling from the ship.

There’s ten, maybe fifteen of them—humanoid figures draped in colorless, loose fabrics peering at him from behind a sea of round-eye masks. Steve takes a cautious step forward as they spread out; realizes, too late, that he’s being flanked.

“Are you a fighter?” The lead figure unclips his visor, revealing a chalky face underneath. “Or are you food?”

Steve glances around at the trash. “I’m just passing through.”

“It is food!” their leader declares, raising a bulky gun. “On your knees.”

Steve holds up his hands, bends one leg. A ploy to draw them in. Then—

“Not today,” he grunts, turning to punch the nearest attacker. Its bright blue mask splinters beneath his knuckles and then it’s flying, slung through the air like a football, up and over the nearest junk heap and out of sight.

Steve blinks.

He looks down at his fist.

“ _GET ‘IM!”_

Steve grins.

The figures are slow, sluggish—he can see them coming from a mile away, two miles, enough time to dodge every punch, every humming click of their strange, clunky guns. He kicks one of them— _bam, bam_ —rapid-fire in the chest, executes a spinning flip off the nearest broken engine to clip another in the head, elbows a third in the neck before punching a fourth in the nose—

“Sorry!” Steve shouts, because, as Sam has called him on more than one occasion, he is a ‘little shit.’ Or a big shit now. A general shit. He can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, can feel the steady flow of air in and out of his lungs, and he isn’t even _tired_ , he isn’t even—

One of the figures connects with his ankle. The pain is fleeting. Mostly he thinks _it was a fun dream while it lasted_ because the fight’s turning sour, and his heart is pumping faster, and he’s going to wake up—

Their leader gets a clear shot and takes it. A weighted net pounces from the barrel of its gun and catches Steve over the head. He’s thrown off-balance, tipping sideways, and then—

He can’t breathe. For once it’s got nothing to do with his body and everything to do with the voltage pumping through the electrodes placed at even intervals across the webbing. He seizes up.

_Wakeupwakeupwakeupwake—_

“Hey, man! You gotta wake up.”

Steve opens his eyes.

A giant blue rock creature blinks down at him.

Steve closes his eyes.

“Yeah, I know, those scrappers really pack a punch. It seems you get hit by an electrode net—I did not get hit with an electrode net, on account of I’m made of rocks. I just got arrested. Tried to start a revolution but didn’t print enough pamphlets, so hardly anyone turned up—except for my mom, and her boyfriend, who I hate. That was a long time ago, though, so I try not to think about it. That was before I ended up in Marvel. Like I said, long time ago. I’m Korg, by the way. And this here is my very good friend Miek. He’s an insect, and he has knives for hands.”

Steve dares a glance just in time for the purplish, slug-like Miek to demonstrate the abilities of his robotic scissor arms.

“I just wanted to wake you up,” Korg continues, “on account of you can’t afford to take naps in the receiving room. Somebody’ll try to kill you for sure. Not me, of course, seeing as I only kill people in the arena, but Margus maybe, or Bill.” Korg offers a hand, levering Steve to his feet. His muscles protest the movement, still twitching from the voltage.

At least the cracked skin of his busted knuckles is familiar, because everything else is not.

He’s in a dimly-lit room. The brightest things are the racks lined up in rows down the center, junkyard scraps holding a tape-and-glue collection of spears, swords, and shields. To his right is some sort of shady bar, and behind him an iron door seals off a ramp and distant sunlight. He reaches up to rub his neck and finds, underneath the collar of his suit, a round piece of metal leeched to his skin. It clings stubbornly when he tries to dislodge it.

“Oh, I see you found your obedience disc—all the fighters have one, on account of Doug. Thanks, Doug.”

Steve gives up. “What does it do?”

“Delivers a nasty shock if you try to escape. Sorta like that electrode net you got brought in with, only more permanent.”

Steve blanches. “Great.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from? I enjoy finding out about new cultures that’ve come to Marvel.” Korg gestures to his rocky chest. “As you can see, I’m a Kronan. Miek is—well, I don’t actually know what Miek is.”

“I’m a human,” Steve manages, staring down his hands.

“Oh, we’re still getting humans? Your planet must be tough to’ve survived with Marvel for so long. Do you have a name?”

“I’m—” Steve takes a breath, curling his fingers towards his palm. “Captain America.”

“Captain America? Bit of a silly name, don’t you think?”

Miek chitters, jerking its knives.

“Right. Miek has informed me that the name is not silly and I’m being rude, which is right. I do apologize for that. I only meant that I’ve never met a human named Captain before.”

“No, that’s not my—” Steve shakes his head. “Never mind. Korg, where are we?”

“Well, we’re on Sakaar. Not the actual planet, obviously, because that was destroyed by Marvel, but the copy of it that got preserved. Kinda a run-down place if you ask me, but no one has—you don’t come to Sakaar by choice, is what I mean. The gladiatorial arena’s run by the Grandmaster. We’re in the receiving area below the games. But don’t worry! They’ll call you up when they want you to fight.”

“The Grandmaster?”

“Yep—he oversees the Contest of Champions. People come from far and wide just to unwillingly participate.”

“Does he have a map?”

Korg watches the ceiling thoughtfully. “Dunno about a map, but he has been going on about a new prize. Some sorta game changer, he’s calling it. Funny,” he turns his gaze back to Steve, “he started announcing it just ‘round the time you showed up.”

Miek _click-click-clicks_.

“Oh, Miek’s right! Seeing as you’re new here, we should treat you to a drink.” Korg pats Steve’s shoulder, herding him towards the bar at the other end of the room. “The Grandmaster pays us prisoners with jobs in alcohol, which is not quite so good as money, if you ask me. Say, you remember that revolution I told you about a few minutes ago? I’m actually organizing another one. I don’t know if you’d be interested in something like that. Do you reckon you’d be interested?”

“I—”

A monstrous, hulking blue figure—more pastel than Korg and without the rocky exoskeleton, face smashed like a Pug’s—shoves between them, kicking Miek. The little slug produces a high-pitched whine as it rolls across the dirty ground.

“Oh, buddy, Miek!” Korg is on his knees immediately, trying to help his friend while simultaneously trying to avoid its knives. “You ok?”

“Hey!” Steve says. The prisoners at the bar barely look at him, too engrossed by their drinks or their weapons, but he finds himself automatically cataloging defensive positions (behind the counter, among the racks) and threats (the man with the veiny, purplish face; the bald woman with the mechanical hand; the shadowy figure with his feet propped up in the corner) anyway. Big Blue pauses menacingly. Steve steps in front of Miek and Korg. “That’s enough.”

“Ha!” Blue’s downturned lips pull into a frightening smile. “Check out the new meat.” He takes a few blustering steps closer and Steve casually taps his earpiece. The game menu materializes, but Blue doesn’t react; Steve’s betting he can’t see it, probably because he’s a non-player character like everyone else here.

Because Steve’s apparently in a video game. Some weird, _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. –_ Marvel hybrid that’d formed when Shuri had set her system down on top of Peggy’s board game.

Right. He can work out the details later. Now—

“I’m gonna slather you up in Gunavian jelly,” Blue snarls, pulling back a fist, “and go to town!”

Steve hits **EQUIP**.

_CLANG_.

Blue reels back with a howl, clutching a hand to his chest. Steve peers over the top of his shield; it’s completely round and surprisingly light. It hadn’t vibrated at all with the hit.

“You little—” Blue growls, charging. Steve slams the shield across his face, watching him fly into the nearest rack, scattering spears and swords with a noise like an explosion.

Everyone goes quiet.

A duck—a _duck_?!—climbs the bar, fixes his slim tie, clears his throat, and then casually smashes a bottle of amber liquid over a pink woman’s head. “RIOT!”

Things dissolve pretty quickly after that.

“Oh, man, Captain America!” Korg’s back on his feet, Miek tucked limply under one arm. “You managed to start a riot in less than ten minutes! That’s pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. Now, I’m gonna go take Miek someplace safe. I’ll be right back!”

Korg jogs off just as the veiny, purplish man chugs the rest of his drink and lunges, lodging a meaty arm around Steve’s neck.

“Ha! If you think you’re so tough, why don’t you try taking on,” he pauses dramatically, “TASERFACE!”

Steve, fingers scrabbling at the elbow around his throat, frowns. “Is that really your name?”

Taserface blinks. Then he bares his gold teeth. “YES!”

“Guess it’s a day for stupid names,” Steve chirps, driving the shield into Taserface’s neck. The humanoid staggers. Steve turns, using his momentum to drive a vicious kick into Taserface’s gut, hard enough that he flies into the bar and then over the bar and then disappears to the sound of shattering glass. Meanwhile the duck’s shooting some sort of miniaturized laser gun at the ceiling as the bald woman rolls her eyes and the rest of the unsavory NPCs beat the living hell out of each other. Also—

“You little rat!” Blue roars, charging. Steve, arms full of alien, goes down hard, losing his grip on the shield. It skitters out of reach. He catches a fistful of brawny knuckles with his nose once, twice—

“Stop.”  

Blue pauses mid-swing, chest heaving. Steve’s squinting, eyes watering from the dull pain hovering around his newly broken nose as he wipes the warm blood away from his chin; it takes a moment for him to place the figure standing behind Blue as the guy who’d been propped up lazily in the corner.

He’s not as tall as the alien currently sitting on Steve’s chest or even as muscular, but there’s a deadly sort of confidence in the way he carries himself, like he’s already figured out seventeen ways to kill you and is considering which one would be the most efficient. There’s a knife strapped to his thigh and a beat-up sniper rifle slung across his back, but the real threat, Steve thinks, is his left arm—a gleaming network of interconnected plates from his shoulder to his fingers. His face is hidden beneath a face mask and some goggles, shrouded by chin-length hair; the rest of him is a shadow thanks to his black tactical gear.

“What was that?” Blue gets slowly to his feet. Steve exhales. “I coulda sworn I heard you say: _stop_.”  

The newcomer watches silently. Steve gets to his knees, spitting blood and reaching for his shield.

“You think I’m afraid of you just ‘cause you almost beat the Grandmaster’s Champion? Well,” Blue swings, “I ain’t!”

The newcomer catches Blue’s fist in his left hand, plates recalibrating in an intricate dance, _whirring_ as he curls Blue’s arm sideways, effortless, until—

_Pop_.

Blue drops, clutching a newly-broken arm. Steve regards the newcomer warily, eyeing the midnight-pitch of his goggles as the fighting careens madly around them.

Korg slides to a stop in No Man’s Land.

“Hey, guys!” he heaves, breathless. “What’d I miss?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	6. four/

The riot gets them all quarantined to cells, grimy squares that have Steve wishing for Peggy’s shoebox at Shady Acres. He momentarily forgets how tall he’s become while folding into the bottom bunk, hitting the back of his head on the rusted slats. The man in black, mismatched hands raised, steps in after him, narrowly avoiding the sizzling red energy that blossoms across the entrance. The brightly colored guard on the other side spits something in a language Steve doesn’t recognize; the man answers, voice flat and rough. Whatever he says is enough to make the guard jam against the beams in a show of sparks. The man raises a casual middle finger. Steve almost smiles, dropping his hands between his knees and letting his head roll forward.

He wonders what happened to Korg and Miek, and then has to remind himself that they weren’t real. He glances sideways. This guy must be an NPC, a non-player character, too. Probably programmed to help Steve out. The thought irks him. He says, thinking of Blue, “I had him on the ropes.”

The man turns. There’s really not enough space for the two of them; he ends up wedging himself next to the bars. “Sure.”

Steve bristles. “I didn’t need your help.”

The man sets his head against the wall. There’s a sloppy paintjob at the top of his metal shoulder, a stylized wing that’s vaguely recognizable. It reminds Steve of a stick-and-poke tattoo: an idea better executed when sober. “The Grandmaster doesn’t like waste. He’s runnin’ a business. Coulda been I was helpin’ him.”

The man’s accent, long buried but still curling the edges of his words, is more intimately familiar. Steve asks, “Where are you from?”

“Around. Your nose is broken.”

“Yeah. Not the first time, either.”

“Really? Coulda fooled me. You look like a regular _Übermensch_. _Die Deutschen hätten dich geliebt._ ” He straightens. “You want me to set it?”

Steve shrugs. He doesn’t really care one way or another; hell, this isn’t even his body. Still, the man reaches forward to grip the bridge of Steve’s nose between the thumb and index finger of his right hand.

“On three. One—”

He presses.

“ _Sonuvabitch_ ,” Steve hisses, shooting a baleful look as it starts bleeding again. “Come on.”

The man shrugs. “You ain’t gonna rip a bandage off slow, are you?”

“Maybe.” Steve refocuses on the insignia in lieu of having to stare at the man’s goggles. It looks like—

He straightens, shield digging into his back.

—like the wings on the faded label of Shuri’s _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ cartridge.

“Did Coulson send you? Deep Shadow conditions?”

The man’s forehead furrows. “I—”

“Wow, so this is him, huh? I was expecting someone—bigger. What do you think, Topaz, were you expecting someone bigger?”

“Dunno.”

“Ah, the correct answer to that would be, _yes_.” A man balanced on a hover-disc glides to a stop in front of the cell, followed shortly by a severe woman wearing absolutely zero expression. “Yuck, and so bloody, too—don’t worry about that, we’ll make sure you get cleaned up nicely before the next fight. Which, speaking of, is the reason I came down here.”

“To the jail,” the woman says.

“To the—not to the _jail_ , Topaz. You know how I feel about that word.”

“I’m sorry.” Topaz pauses. “To the rooms without doors or windows.”

“Fine. I guess I should introduce myself— _ahem_.” He holds out his hands, asymmetrical robe sparkling metallic-gold in the red light of the bars. “I’m the Grandmaster, welcome to my little corner of Marvel.”

Steve stares.

“I’m the Grandmaster!” the Grandmaster repeats, emphasizing his outstretched arms. When neither Steve nor his cellmate acknowledge the gesture, he drops them to his side. “Topaz, remind me to bring the entourage next time. I usually do this in my throne room,” the Grandmaster explains, “but I had you tossed down here as soon as the scrappers told me you were from Earth. I didn’t want to get attached—we don’t get very many of you Terrans who survive the games. Well,” the Grandmaster’s attention shifts momentarily. “Anyway. What do they call you? Star…guy? Shield-man?”

“Uh, I’m.” Steve glances quickly across his swollen nose. “Captain America.”

His cellmate snorts.

“Captain Ah—seriously? That’s a bit of a mouthful. Isn’t that a bit of a mouthful, Topaz?”

“Yes, sir. A very large mouthful.”

“Well, Corporal America, just wanted to come down here to deliver my thanks in person. Your little riot in the receiving area completely inspired me. You know, just between the two of us, I’ve been looking for a way to clean house, and a Battle Royale is the perfect idea. Topaz and I were talking about it over breakfast, and she agreed, she said it was just the,” the Grandmaster waits expectantly. “Starts with a ‘b.’”

“Trash,” Topaz says, staring flatly at Steve.

“What? Trash? No! Did you just want to call him trash? Best. She meant to say best.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, this has been just the—just the funnest little chat, hasn’t it? I’ve got to get back up to my harlequinade top side, but I’m really looking forward to seeing you both in the upcoming Battle Royale—anyone,” he points to his eyes and then points to Steve, “who can take a beating from Monstrous Inmate #4 and survive is someone to watch out for, even if you are a squishy little human.”

“And what, the winner gets their freedom?” The man in black crosses his arms. “Seems like even worse odds than fightin’ your Champion.”

“Well, you came out of that alright, didn’t you? But yes, whosoever stands victorious at the end of the Battle Royale, their freedom they shall win—but also this map, which has come into my possession quite suddenly. It’s a win-win. A win for me, mostly, but also a win,” he adds, conciliatory, “for all of you, because what better way to go than in a blaze of glory. Right, Topaz?”

“Right.”

“What’s it a map of?” Steve asks.

“Oh, nothing much, just the location of the Infinity Stones. I’d be much more interested if I didn’t enjoy this little perpetual shindig so much—”

The man in black slams his metal fist into the energy beams and the Grandmaster adjusts the floppy collar of his robe.

“Well, isn’t this just—isn’t this cute? Now he’s threatening me. He’s threatening me, Topaz, can you,” the Grandmaster gestures vaguely.

Topaz pulls a small, rectangular fob from a pouch at her hip and presses the button on top. The man in black drops.

“Win the Battle Royale. Win your freedom and the map. Don’t,” the Grandmaster holds up a finger, “think you can beat my fun little obedience discs. You know,” he tucks his hand under his chin as Topaz puts the fob away, “we really need to come up with a better name for those. That was only ever supposed to be a placeholder name.”

“Painful shock collars,” Topaz offers.

“What? No! Come on, you know I don’t like to hear that!”

“Tracker chips.”

“Better. See, that’s better, we could work with that—”

“I don’t believe you.” The man’s breath rips harsh and rapid through his mask. His arm _whirs_. “No one knows the location of all the Infinity Stones, why the hell do you think we’re stuck here—”

The Grandmaster _clucks_. “Topaz.”

The man stiffens in anticipation as Topaz reaches into her side pouch again, only this time she withdraws a folded piece of paper that she unfurls without ceremony. The Grandmaster winks.

“Consider this, ah, a little _sneak peek_.”

The watercolor ink spilling across the creamy page paints a picture Steve can’t even imagine: pockets of jungle sitting between places with names like XANDAR or the SANCTUM, landscapes marred by rocky outcroppings or skulls or bright stars that pulse softly at disparate points, purple-blue-green—

“What’s so special about that?” the man snaps. “It’s just Marvel.”

“Oh, you can’t read it? Well, that’s—that is unfortunate. Topaz?”

Topaz examines the paper and shrugs.

“Corporal America?”

Steve doesn’t say anything.

“Ah, ah. This is interesting.” The Grandmaster waves his fingers over the page. “Looks like someone’s got a little, little cosmic energy flowing through their veins.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m from Brooklyn.”

“Look, Corporal—can I call you Corporal?” The Grandmaster gestures to Topaz, who folds the map back into her pouch, and then delicately lifts a turquoise nail to scratch his head. “I may have, ah, an abundance of good looks, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Tell him what I mean, Topaz.”

“He means he’s not an idiot.”

“Thank you. Now.” The Grandmaster claps his hands. “I’m off. Got people to do, things to see—say, have you, ah, informed the workers about the new arena set-up?”

Topaz exhales. “The slaves have seen the new blueprint, yes.”

“Hey!”

“I’m sorry. The prisoners with jobs are prepping the arena.”

The Grandmaster waves magnanimously. “Ok, that’s better.”

Their voices disappear. Steve waits until he can no longer hear the _clomp-clomp-clomp_ of Topaz’s boots before leaning forward. “Hey—”

The man reaches up to unclip the sides of his mask, face carefully turned towards the corner of the cell. He spits. The movement is so entirely _human_ that Steve briefly forgets he’s a video game character.

God, this is really messing with his head.

“Brooklyn?” the man rasps, clapping his mask back in place.

Steve blinks. “Huh?”

“I’m—you could really read it?”

Steve runs a hand down his face, forgetting his nose until he’s nudged it again. He grimaces. “Colored markers. Got a quick look.” He drops his arm. “What exactly are we dealing with here?”

“Are you shittin’ me?”

Steve raises his eyebrows, unimpressed. The man runs a hand through his hair and stands, eyeing the empty hall, the cell across from him whose three-headed occupant snored through the entirety of the Grandmaster’s speech.

“Once word gets ‘round that the Grandmaster’s got the key to leaving Marvel, everyone’s gonna come for it—doesn’t matter if it’s written with invisible fuckin’ ink.”

“Because of the Infinity Stones.”

“Gee, you’re sure sharp.”

“They forgot to add professional asshole to your dossier.”

“I’m not with—” the man breaks off. His metal arm recalibrates. Steve watches it carefully. “I’m just a semi-professional asshole.”

“I’m glad you cleared that up.”

“And you’re Captain Fuckin’ America.”

“I didn’t pick the name.”

“Sure, buddy.”

“You got one?”

“A buddy?”

“A name.”

“Sergeant Screamin’ Eagle.”

“Hilarious.” Steve scrubs his hands through his hair. “Look, I’m just—trying to figure this out, ok? And we’re going to need to be on the same page if we want to get that map.”

“We?”

“We’re on the same team,” Steve points out patiently.

“Right. Coulson’s team. Deep Shadow conditions.” The three-headed man gives a mighty snort and rolls over. The man tenses. “I ain’t so good with teams.”

“Me neither. Should be fun.”

“Swell.”

“Swell?” Steve’s mouth quirks. “Who says _swell_ anymore?”

“I do. Fuck off.”

“Fucking off.”

“And it’s the Winter Soldier.”

“Sorry?”

“Codename.” The Winter Soldier shrugs. “Almost as dumb as Captain America.”

Steve inclines his head. “Almost.”

“Listen, the Infinity Stones are the most powerful items in the whole goddamn universe, and the only way to get out of here is to collect all six of them. We gotta stay on our toes.”

Steve rubs the leather around his busted knuckles. “What, you mean get out of Sakaar?”

“I mean get out of Marvel.” The Soldier shakes his head. “Wake up, Cap. You sure as hell ain’t in Kansas anymore.”

 

 


	7. five/

Sam wakes up on the floor of T’Challa’s penthouse kitchen with no memory of how he got there and a smirking brunette eating Fruit Loops staring down at him from one of the barstools.

“Hi?” he tries, and yep, ok, his voice works. That’s good. That’s a step in the right direction.

“’Sup,” the girl crunches. Sam tries to sit up, but when the world completely tilts on its axis he decides that’s not such a good idea.

“Any bets as to why I’m on the kitchen floor?” he asks.

“I think you wanted water and forgot how to open the fridge.”

“You’ve been watching me sleep for how long, and that’s the best you came up with?”

“Dude, that took me thirty minutes to CSI. I may be Jane’s intern, but I’m a _Political_ Science Major, not a _Nerd_ Science Major.”

“Darcy, right?”

“Very good.” She throws a soggy Fruit Loop at him as a reward.

“Positive reinforcement requires something, you know, positive.”

She throws the entire box at him. Sam can’t be bothered to move it from where it lands on his face. He shuts his eyes instead. Then he opens them, frowning at the ceiling painted crisply by New Year’s morning spilling through the large windows.

“That fucker.”

“Huh?”

“My best friend. He didn’t pick up.”

“Aw, you called him at midnight? That’s so sweet.”

Sam holds out his arms. “Can you give me a hand?”

Darcy wipes her mouth and stands. “Only if you promise not to vomit all over my shoes.”

When he’s upright, suffering only mildly from vertigo and having remembered how to open the fridge in order to raid T’Challa’s Gatorade stash, he digs his phone out of his front pocket.

“Good news is,” he tells Darcy, who has returned to attacking her Fruit Loops, “I didn’t text my ex.”

“And the bad news?”

“I texted Claire.”

“Who is…?”

“The nurse from a hospital I frequent,” Sam says dryly, rubbing his eye. Darcy peers over his shoulder.

 

**ME: would u like to go to sinner [11:43 P.M.]**

**ME: to sinner [11:43 P.M.]**

**ME: SINNER [11:43 P.M.]**

**ME: DINNERT [11:44 P.M.]**

**CLAIRE: Ask me when you’re sober. I might even say yes. ;) [11:46 P.M.]**

“Aw,” Darcy pouts, “she thinks your fat thumbs are cute.”

“My thumbs aren’t fat. Drunk-me can’t type.” Sam, looking at his call history, notices that Steven G. Rogers missed exactly 26 phone calls from him between midnight and 12:02. “Hey, you seen T’Challa?”

Darcy shrugs. “I only know that Jane is passed out on the couch but still breathing.”

“You’re a good intern.”

“Why, thank you,” Darcy bobs. “Hey, if you find Ian, can you tell him I found the car keys?”

 

Sam ventures into the dining room with his phone cradled between his shoulder and his ear, listening to it ring and ring and ring. The view of Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge is absolutely ridiculous.

“Hi. You’ve reached Steve Rogers. I’m unable to come to the phone right now, but please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as I can.”

“Steve. We’re going to have a long talk about phone etiquette. And also ignoring your best friend. Call me back.”

He finds T’Challa on one of the patio chairs on the upstairs balcony, hands crossed over his stomach and eyes hidden tactfully behind a pair of Ray-Bans.

“You alive?”

“Perhaps.”

“Nakia still asleep?”

“I have reason to believe Nakia has been secretly running several spy rings.”

“So, no?”

T’Challa grins; he waves his hand. “She is working. Do you need her advice on something?”

“Yeah. How much of a mother hen would I be if I went to go check on Steve?”

“Why would you need to check on Steve?”

“Because I called him 26 times last night and he didn’t pick up. I know,” Sam holds up his hands at T’Challa’s raised eyebrows, “I know he’s sick. And he probably fell asleep.”

“Yes.”

“I also know that I’m going to have to let him fly on his own sooner or later. Probably sooner, because I’m shipping out for Basic in two weeks—”

“My friend, Steve Rogers has been flying on his own since the moment he was born. We are merely lucky to occasionally be in the flight path.”

“He’s a goddamn idiot.”

“That, too.”

“I’m going to check on him.”

T’Challa’s mouth quirks. “I do not think the gesture would be amiss.”

Sam nods.

“While I have you here, my friend—am I remembering correctly, or did you not text a very pretty nurse last—”

“Shut up.”

 

“What the heck’s all that noise?!”

Sam pauses his attack on Steve’s door, glancing up. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lieber, but have you seen Steve around?”

“Steve? Nah.” Mr. Lieber, the wizened old man from the unit directly above, peers over the stairwell. “I thought he caught the pneumonia.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“He probably just needs his beauty sleep, I wouldn’t worry too much—say, where were you for New Year’s?”

“Uh, up in Dumbo.”

“You guys have a surge?”

“A surge?”

“A power surge! ‘Round midnight the whole block went. Didn’t even get to watch the ball drop.”

“It’s not that exciting.”

“Kid, when you’re as old as me, every New Year’s is exciting. Tell Steve I’ve got some pages, if he wants—doin’ a new arc with the spider-kid. Timely wants ‘em in a week.”

“Will do.”

Sam unearths the spare key under the brick by the welcome mat and opens the door. Immediately—white noise, from the TV. Static running across the screen. The space between Sam’s shoulder blades itches as he kicks wood, knocking it shut behind him. On the microwave, the digital-green readout flashes **0:00**.

“Steve?”

The blanket’s waded up on the couch, and T’Challa’s scarf is curled on the floor. Sam steps on Steve’s glasses, the black frames nearly invisible on the busy carpet, and breaks them clean down the middle, which, shit.

“Man, that was your fault,” he says, because Steve is definitely here. Steve is probably in the bathroom. Sam’s voice doesn’t fit the shape of the apartment.

He puts the halves on the coffee table, next to Peggy’s weird ass board game and a Super Nintendo that he’d watch Shuri smuggle over yesterday, and then starts digging for the remote. It’s a lost cause. Sam ends up jimmying the entire entertainment unit sideways and jerking the power strip from the wall. 

Silence, except his heartbeat:

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

Sam scrubs his hands on his jeans and examines the rest of the apartment—the tiny, dated bathroom, 40s-ish with white tiles and turquoise paint; Steve’s room, with its twin bed and walls covered in art, famous pieces that Sam should definitely know by now next to pages torn from some of Timely’s comics.

He pauses in front of the master bedroom.

“Steve?” he tries one more time, opening the door.

He expects it to look like it did when Sarah Rogers was alive: slightly cluttered, warm, inviting; there’d been a quilted bedspread in shades of yellow that Sam had associated with her, always, but—

“Goddammit, Steve,” he sighs, because at some point Steve had quietly packed away all of his mother’s things into several cardboard boxes labeled **DONATE**. Sam backs out of the room and shuts the door. He digs his phone out of his pocket.

“ _I come up hard baby, but now I’m cool—I didn’t make it sugar, playin’ by the rules—I come up hard baby, but now I’m fine—I’m checkin’ trouble sugar, movin’ down the line—”_

Marvin Gaye leads him back to the couch, where Steve’s own phone is wedged underneath one of the cushions. Sam lets it ring out. And then, feeling very calm, he dials again. This time, someone picks up. 

“911, what is your emergency?”

 

 


	8. six/

“Welcome, my most loyal subjects, to an exciting new event here at my Contest of Champions that I like to call…the Battle Royale!”

Steve shifts his weight, the dull roar of the spectators settling on his shoulders in the dark. He readjusts his grip on the leather strap of the shield. It feels so _real_ , already worn where he grasps it, the joints fraying; it shouldn’t be this seamless. Because it is, he’s starting to think of these hands as his hands, of this body as his body. When he finally gets back—

“The _point_ is, to ah, well—kill the other competitors. The winners of the first five rounds will face each other in a final bout of _Sudden Elimination_. And by winners, I mean survivors. And by elimination, I mean death. Should be a good time!”

Steve’s heartbeat pounds in his ears like a drum: _BA-DUM, BA-DUM, BA-DUM._

He takes a breath.

“So, without any further ado, I give you…the first round of my new Battle Royale! Twenty go in and only one comes out, I wonder who it’s going to be?”

The metal door rattles up on rusty hinges, revealing the sandlot curve of a large coliseum painted in muted shades of red and turquoise, air shimmering gold as the Grandmaster’s hologram disappears. Seats encircle the arena like cupped palms: seven balconies worth, stretching up and up and up. Steve expects thousands to be filled but the rumble of before must’ve been a trick of the dark, because there are only hundreds, dotted sparsely and jeeringly around the lower-most ring. Above, the matte-black sky is filled with the spotlights of interested ships, oddly shaped and brightly colored like the one that had picked him up.

The other participants venture out from similar entrances across the coliseum floor. Steve picks out familiar faces: the blue-and-purple cyborg, the duck, Monstrous Inmate #4, Taserface, Korg, Miek, the three-headed giant, and there, directly opposite, the Winter Soldier—

“Alright!” the Grandmaster booms. Steve glances up. There’s a VIP suite nestled onto the fifth row of balconies, jutting over the action in a swoop of reinforced steel and glass. “Let’s get this show on the road, huh?”

Nobody moves.

“Uh, I _said_ ,” the Grandmaster pauses meaningfully, “fight.”

To Steve’s left, the blue-and-purple cyborg rolls her eyes, glancing down at the slim, graceful fingers of her mechanical hand. To his right—

Shit.

Steve dodges the razorblade lunge of a green-skinned alien. The creature plants a hand and pivots, teeth bared. Its arm grows mid-flight, gaining muscle mass and weight, turning the same consistency as Korg’s rocky skin so that by the time Steve ducks behind the shield it’s strong enough to send him crashing into the wall. Something cracks. It’s probably the plaster.

“You’re certainly tough, for a human.” The creature’s lanky arm shrinks back to a relatively normal size, losing its dusty hue. “This is nothing personal, I assure you.”

Steve slides to the ground, spitting blood. He’d almost bit through his tongue. “Kinda feels personal.”

The alien curls its lip and Steve chucks the shield like a Frisbee, mostly as a distraction—instead it careens into the folded skin of the creature’s jaw, defies all known laws of physics, and rebounds back. The weight of it barely stings when it hits his palm.

Ok, then.

“You do your species a disfavor,” the alien hisses, chin cracking. “Selfishly throwing yourself into battle, heedless—”

“What are you doing, then?”

“This place has taken everything from me, _human_. And now the Grandmaster proclaims to have a map to the Infinity Stones, a map that could restore my kindred, the Skrulls, to their former glory—it is my _duty_ to fight. Your people, your precious Earth, still yet lives.”

Steve aims for the Skrull’s knee but is a second too slow; it grabs the edge of the metal, claws scraping through the ostentatious paint job.

“I believe my reason for fighting far outweighs yours.”

It flings him sideways. Steve crashes, skidding close to the pissing contest between Monstrous Inmate #4 and Taserface.

“Well, well, well.” Monstrous Inmate #4 stretches his flat, pale lips into an imitation of a smile. “Look what the space whale dragged in. How’s it going, Gunavian jelly?”

“Hold on!” Taserface’s blaster hums in his hands, the end of it glowing menacingly. “It was him that insulted me! I should get to kill him!”

The Skrull stalks forward. “I believe I have become emotionally invested in killing the human.”

“Stay out of this, Kl’rt!” Taserface bellows. “He’s too squishy for you to kill!”

Monstrous Inmate #4 beats his chest. “He punched me in the face!”

“Technically,” Steve points out, pushing to his feet, “I punched all of you in the face.”

Beat.

_“KILL HIM!”_

Steve slams the shield into Monstrous Inmate #4’s knee, planting his hand against the sand to spring up, to drive a boot into Kl’rt’s face. He twists out of the leap, landing flat-footed just in time to watch Taserface ditch his weapon and charge. Steve catches the tackle, boots slipping. Around him: chaos, the ring erupted, punches thrown, swords flashing—

Steve eyes the VIP suite, well out of harm’s way. His skin itches.

“I will CRUSH you! And when you are DEAD, you will remember it was because of…TASERF—”

“Taserface, yeah, got it.” Steve lets go, twisting sideways. Taserface’s momentum carries into a face plant just as someone snaps a heavy kick into the small of Steve’s back. All the air leaves him at once. Familiar panic seizes its way up his throat as he struggles to breathe, dropping the shield and stumbling forward. Monstrous Inmate #4 gets an arm around his throat.

“Too bad you don’t have someone watching your back, Terran.”

Steve heaves, scrabbling. The Skrull advances. Monstrous Inmate #4 is too busy trying to snap Steve’s neck to notice the way the alien’s green skin morphs like wet clay on a wheel into a scythe—

“Captain America,” Agent Coulson says pleasantly, appearing directly in the Skrull’s path. “You seem to be running low on health.”

Monstrous Inmate #4, easily startled, squeezes tighter. “What the ever-lovin’—”

Steve drives his heel into the creature’s shin and then turns to slap his cupped palms over his ears. Big Blue goes down howling just as the Skrull’s blade slices through Coulson’s chest in a path of shimmering red light. Steve darts back, trying to dance closer to the shield.

“Hold B to dodge,” Coulson informs him.

“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Steve shouts, rolling under Kl’rt’s legs.

“I feel like now might be a prudent time to remind you of what happens if you let your health reach zero.” Coulson watches Steve avoid a skewering with an agreeable sort of expression on his face. “Unfortunately, S.H.I.E.L.D. has not developed the technology needed for unlimited respawns. You’ll have to use the three lives given to you carefully if you want to collect the stones and leave Marvel—”

“Do you have any useful tips?” Steve gets in a quick uppercut, jabbing Kl’rt’s nose. “Like maybe how to defeat shapeshifting aliens?”

Coulson blinks. “Your mission objective is to collect the map from the Grandmaster.”

“ _No_ , that’s not what I—”

The alien’s blade catches him across the side, a long, thin cut that stings more than anything. He feels the blood welling fast and hot to the surface, watches it dye the navy of his suit black, blinks up and tries to dodge but is slow, too slow—

_CLANG!_

The scythe reaps harmlessly down a metal forearm.

The Soldier grabs the Skrull by the throat.

He is quick and brutally efficient, slamming the alien’s head into the arena floor as the crowd cheers. Steve hates it. All of it. Kl’rt blinks, dazed, and the Soldier does it again—

“Stop,” Steve manages, picking up the shield. “He’s not what we’re here for.”

The Soldier’s goggles betray no emotion as he tosses Kl’rt next to Taserface. “Then what are we here for? Knittin’ circles? To make some friends? I’d sure as hell like to take the Green Goblin here to a dance hall—”

“It said it’s a Skrull.”

“I know he’s a Skrull, he’s _the_ fuckin’ Skrull!” The Soldier pauses, jerking his chin towards Coulson. “Who the hell’s this guy?”  

Steve frowns. Korg chooses that moment to make a grand entrance from the far side of the arena, shouting, “Piss off, ghost!” as he slams a rocky foot through the agent’s stomach. He pulls up short when Coulson disappears. “He’s gone.” 

Miek chitters.

“That part of your cosmic energy, too?” The Soldier sounds agitated. His metal hand keeps opening and closing, opening and closing; there’s a crack spider-webbing through one of his goggle lenses. He finally yanks them off. His eyes are mercury, intense as a heart attack. Steve presses hard against his side.  

“How long would it take to evacuate the Grandmaster from his suite?”

The Soldier’s caught off-guard, eyebrows pulling together. “I dunno. Five minutes. Probably. Tops.”

“Korg, how do you feel about starting that revolution?”

“What, now, Captain America?”

“Yeah, now. Right now.”

“Well, I mean, if you’re asking my personal opinion now’s a bit of a mess, but I suppose it’s as good a time as any.”

Steve hefts up Taserface’s abandoned gun, clunky enough to be mistaken for a canon—probably nearer an M2 Mortar or a bazooka in firepower than anything else. “You see that crack over there?”

Korg shields his eyes against the stadium lights, finding the sizeable crater Steve had left in the coliseum wall. “Why yes, I do see that crack.”

“That’s your ticket out of here.” Steve tosses the weapon. It looks small and ridiculous in Korg’s mountainous hands. “Light it up.”

Miek clicks, raising a knife in salute.

“Miek’s right—it has been an honor, Captain America. Even though we only knew each other a short time, I feel as if we became very good friends. Perhaps someday, when this is all over, you will come visit and tell my mother’s boyfriend of the especially great rebellion we led here today, against tyranny and—”

 A three-pronged spear misses its intended target and impales Korg through the back.

“—aw, come on, guys!” Korg turns, almost taking Steve out with the shaft. “What have we said about the using this thing, there’s still hair on it from the last fight!” Korg sighs. “Captain America, would you please remove the vampire-hunting spear from my back?”

Steve stares. “Is my removing it going to kill you?”

“No, on account of I’m made of rocks.”

“Are you sure, because it—”

The Soldier yanks the thing free, muttering, “Like ripping off a bandage,” to Steve as he tosses it aside. Steve is suitably unimpressed.  

“Ah, that is much better. Yes, alright, guys—for the revolution!” Korg shouts gently, jumping back into the fray with Miek close at his heels. Steve tracks the blue outcropping of his head as it zigs and zags across the arena floor.

“One problem.” The Soldier pulls his collar to reveal the metal embedded angrily in his skin. “The moment Korg starts shooting, the Grandmaster’s gonna activate the obedience disc.”

“Not if he’s too preoccupied with us.”  

“Well, that’s news.”

Steve starts jogging towards the closest section of the coliseum wall. “What did you think we were going to do?”

“Win.”

“Seriously?” Steve hooks the shield over his back, ducking under a purple energy blast. “You didn’t recognize Coulson.”

“I was a little preoccupied.” The Soldier glances up, following the straight line of Steve’s path towards the suite looming overhead. He catches someone’s wild punch without looking and bats them aside. “How do you plan on getting up there?”

“Know anyone who can fly?”

There’s a long pause.

“I was kidding,” Steve assures him.

“Not like Superman, you mook,” the Soldier snaps.

“Then like who, Maverick?”

“Who?”

“ _Top Gun_.”

“What the fuck is a top gun? I’m talkin’ about jump-boots. Some of the specialized guards have ‘em. Little rockets for your feet.”

“Uh, hey!” the Grandmaster’s voice claps suddenly across the arena. “Hey, you there, Prisoner Blue Rock Man, stop shooting at that, stop—Topaz, tell him, it’s not—guards!”

Steve pulls up, jamming his shoulder into the plaster and interlocking his fingers. “Come on.”

The Soldier takes a few steps back.

“Try not to kill anyone,” Steve says.

“No promises,” the Soldier answers blithely, beginning to run.

 

“Looks like Midtown after the Rangers won the Cup, don’t it?”

Steve eyes the panicked crowd throwing themselves over the stadium seats. “I don’t know. I kind of missed it.”

“How the hell could you miss it?” They begin wading into the bedlam. “Ain’t like Brooklyn was _immune_ —”

Steve ducks someone’s wildly waving fist. The last Stanley Cup the Rangers had won had been in 1994, just before he was born. “Didn’t know you were from New York.”

It doesn’t matter. An oddly-specific backstory doesn’t make the Soldier any less of an NPC, but Steve’s thinking of beers, of him and Sam on T’Challa’s balcony watching the moon rise over Lower Manhattan, of Sam saying, “Well, home is home, you know—”

The Soldier shrugs. “Coulda been visiting.”

“From where?”

“The Alps.”

“Like hell you’re Swedish.”

“The Alps don’t _just_ go through Sweden.”

Steve thinks. “Austria?”

“ _Zufallstreffer_.”

Steve barely has time to appreciate how little he pants as they jump the stairs two-at-a-time towards the last row of seats. The crowd parts, thinning out near the top and giving the Soldier room to leap off a chairback for the second tier. Steve follows. Below them, the arena floor is chaos, a Jackson Pollock that’s been put through a blender—Korg, at least, is still chipping away. He’d been joined by the duck. The blue-and-purple cyborg looks to be on protection detail, which is good, because a contingent of guards is entering the fight.

“We’re takin’ too long.”

“What’s the evacuation route look like?”

The Soldier scrunches up his nose; Steve can only see the top of it, the deep furrows cutting between his eyebrows. “He’s got a hangar. Bunch of ships.”

“You know where he would go?”

“Yeah,” the Soldier deadpans, “away.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m just thinking ahead—”

“Cap, if you start plannin’ for contingencies we’ll be ninety-five and dead before we get that map.” The Soldier turns, walking backwards so he can face Steve. “We get up there before our timer’s up and it won’t be a prob—”

A blast of purple energy cuts into his side, filling the air with the angry smell of burning flesh. The Soldier drops to one knee and immediately unsheathes his knife. Behind him, pouring through the nearest entrance, is a troop of monochromatic guards. Steve picks apart their dynamics easily enough—deep ocean blue for the lithe, long-scoped snipers hovering nimbly in the air; coffee grounds for the infantry making up the first line of defense; and a bloody, rich red for the heavies in the back, two giant tanks with impressive gun barrels slung under each arm.

_Snipers first_ , Steve thinks with a surety he shouldn’t have.

“Put your weapons down!” one of the infantrymen shouts.

“Ok,” Steve agrees, and throws the shield. It cracks across the lead figure’s chin, sending them careening into the first row of seats and upsetting the balance of one of the snipers. Steve catches the rebound mid-run, leaping over the Soldier to cover him just as one of the tanks unloads a rapid-fire blast. The beams _bring-bring-bring-bring_ against the shield.

 “You hear the one about the guy who brought a knife to a gunfight and won?”

The Soldier grunts, serrated edge of his blade flowing like water over rocks as he flips it between his knuckles.

“Yeah,” Steve grimaces, bracing. “Me neither.”

“Ye of little faith,” the Soldier breathes, rolling from underneath cover so he can engage up close with the light infantry, drawing off the fire of the tanks who don’t want to hit their own. Steve spins into the fight. It’s a singular, far-away feeling, like thumbs at a controller: left, right, punch, punch, dodge, grab, until—

Pain. Just pain, exploding from his neck, up into his brain and down into his spine. Steve bares his teeth, tipping sideways. The Soldier falls heavily next to him. 

“The Grandmaster orders you to stop,” Topaz sighs, sounding bored. She emerges from between the heavies, holding a purple wand in her hand. “He’s not approved fighting beyond the ground floor. Also, he hates that you ruined his death match.”

“It’s not a—Topaz!” The Grandmaster appears in a flurry of gold-red-blue light, skyscraper hologram flickering. Topaz exhales.

“I’m sorry. His Battle Royale.” She motions for one of the guard’s weapons, a staff tipped with a sharp curve of bluish light. Steve, locked up on the plaster, can only watch as she approaches.

“Uh, for crimes against—me.” The Grandmaster puts a hand to his chin. “I hereby pardon you…from life.”

The Soldier hisses, “Cap—”

Topaz sighs.

Then she drives the electric blade through Steve’s heart.

 

 


	9. seven/

At this time of day, the European Sculpture Court is flooded with sunlight.

The crisp cleanness of it drips molten through the picture windows, paints the petrified garden in shades of white—moments frozen in amber, carved of marble. The quiet murmur of diners enjoying the Petrie Court Café, broken by the occasional _clank_ of silverware on glass, swells like a tide behind him.

Steve adjusts his perch on the portable stool he’d gotten for Christmas, not-so-subtly peering over the shoulder of the old man next to him so he can watch the veiny, dark-skinned hand steadily sketch the profile of Ugolino and his sons.

“You know, ain’t nothin’ gonna appear on that page less you draw it yourself.”

Steve, ashamed at being caught, buries his nose in his blank sketchbook. The old man tips his fedora back with the curve of his wrist.

“Ugolino, though,” he says, squinting between his art and the sculpture before tuning to Steve with a wink, “he be a tough customer.”

Steve pushes his glasses up. They’re too big. He’d gotten them three years ago under the belief that he’d grow into them, but now he’s fourteen and they’re still slipping down his nose.

“I think it looks real good,” he says shyly, eyes tracing over the menacing, conflicted curves of the titular man, the way his substantial fingers tear at his own lips. His sons are despairing arcs coiling towards the center of the piece, nothing but soft impressions on the paper waiting to be filled in.

“Why, thank you.” The old man sets his notebook down carefully on the shiny, cream-colored floor and cracks arthritic fingers. “You got any idea why the fellow looks that way?”

Steve shakes his head.

“He’s trying to decide if he should eat his kids.”

“That’s _horrible_.”

“Yeah. But it makes for great art.” The old man gestures for the sketchpad in Steve’s lap. “Here, what you got down?”

Steve flushes. He’d done a real rush job on Perseus before he decided he wanted to challenge himself. He unearths the shaky line art.

He’d captured almost nothing of the smooth, marble hero—not the soft folds of fabric draped over one arm, none of his contrapposto, not even his peaceful face. Medusa, anguished in her decapitation, slithering hair drawn together in Perseus’ grip, had seemed like the more interesting subject. He thought he’d captured her anguish well enough, but compared to the old man’s Ugolino, her misery is nothing. Childish. Fake.

“You focus on poor Medusa, huh?”

“I felt bad. She got killed for being herself.”

The old man nods slowly. Then he takes his thumb, the skin peeling around his nail, and traces her cheek. “You getting there, I think.”

“How’d I know I’d find you here?”

Steve’s breath catches in his throat. The stool creaks ominously beneath him. When the old man gives back his sketchbook, the hands that take it aren’t Steve’s hands, they’re someone else’s.

“Mom?”

Sarah Rogers ruffles his hair like he doesn’t suddenly tower over her, like he isn’t hunched on the stool she’d got him for Christmas wearing a new body. This is a years-old routine, a summertime groove—the morning drop-off on the steps of the Met before her shift at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist when the air is still dewy and the street vendors are just starting to spread out their wares; the evening pick up after Steve has spent hours and hours copying old paintings and older masters—

He wants to say something important, but what he says is, “You’re early,” because this has already happened. He wishes, looking at the quiet strength around her blue eyes, that he had said anything else.

“Thought I’d get off and we could go down to Nathan’s.”

“Really?”

His mom smiles mischievously. “Really. I might even spring for a ride on the Wonder Wheel.”

The chair stops creaking. Steve stands and his lungs rattle. His glasses fall down his nose.

“Your son’s got quite a bit o’ talent, ma’am, if you don’t mind me sayin’.” The old man picks up his paper and pen, settling in to draw the rest of Ugolino’s sons.

“Not at all,” Sarah Rogers smiles. “I think he might be going places.”

 

Steve lands heavily on the second balcony of the Grandmaster’s arena and is greeted by absolute, astonished silence.

Topaz is caught in the act, frozen over the Soldier with one hand still curled firmly on the wand controlling the obedience discs and the other ready to plunge the electric-spear through his neck. Steve takes the occasion of her shock to bring a hand to his own—the disc is gone. His uniform, stained with blood from Kl’rt’s cut and grimy with Sakaaran dirt, is disgustingly clean. The shield drops into his waiting hand.

Topaz goes, “Shit,” lets go of the wand, and makes a huffing getaway for the nearest exit. The guards are close on her heels. The Soldier shouts, “Jump-boots!” and Steve barely has time to clip the nearest sniper before they’ve all gone—the marksman plunges into the third row of seats, groaning pitifully as Steve strips the small rockets from her shoes and casually snaps the barrel of her rifle.

The Soldier gets up, flesh hand pressed to his neck and metal one realigning. He fishes Topaz’s purple obedience controller off the ground. “I just have one question.”

Steve lobs the jump-boots. “Shoot.”

 “What the _fuck_.”

Steve’s wrist itches. He has to dig between the stiff fabric of his suit and his leather gloves to reach it. “Uh, I died, I guess—”

“You _guess_.”

“Yeah, I _guess_ ,” Steve snaps. He can still smell the cool, clean air of the Met.

“Jesus.” The Soldier quickly fits the rockets onto his boots, tightening the sling around his heel. “Jesus _Christ_.”

“No, I’m Captain America.”

“You sure?” The Soldier jumps an inch or so off the ground, the miniature engines sitting on either side of his ankle buoying him into a warm float. “His thing was comin’ back from the dead, too.”

Steve’s wrist _still_ itches. When he peels back his uniform in frustration, revealing the soft joint where the curve of his palm meets the blue-purple rivers of his veins, he finds three blocky tallies carved in black ink. The leftmost one is steadily erasing itself. He watches it disappear entirely before folding the fabric back in place. The Soldier’s talking.

“Huh?” he manages. 

“I said, how many more times?”

“How many more times what?”

“How many more times can you do that?”

“Do what?” Steve asks.

“Cut the Indiana farm boy routine, you know what I’m askin’.”

“A few. Enough.”

The Soldier snorts, rising off the ground like the Rocketeer and deftly maneuvering behind Steve. “Enough,” he repeats sarcastically, jamming his hands under Steve’s armpits. “Sure.” Nothing happens for a long, terrible second except the struggling sound of the jump-boots trying to screech into orbit, and then, in a rush of hot air, they begin to rise. The wind is desert dry over his nose, his cheeks. Steve has to shout over it.

“If you can keep me steady, I can crack that reinforced glass with the shield—”

“Scratch that, Cap. I got a better plan.”

“Really.”

The rockets, gamely adjusting to the weight of two passengers, begin to pulse, picking up speed. They level out next to the VIP suite, high enough that Korg and the duck and the blue-and-purple cyborg are small as ants below. Steve only has a second to admire the completely horrified expression on the Grandmaster’s face before the Soldier is leaning hard right, looping them over the cheap seats.

“What the hell are you doing!” Steve shouts. They careen around the curve, gaining height and speed as they hurtle back towards the box.

“Bet you could join the Screamin’ Eagles after this!” the Soldier shouts, then lets go.   

Steve falls.

He crashes through the glass.

 

“Look, I’ll give you, ah, ah, whatever you want.” The Grandmaster rubs his hands fitfully over his thighs, swinging one leg over the other and then raising his arms when Steve presses forward with the shield, sinking into the pinched white leather of the couch. “I can get you whatever you want. How about a private viewing of the Tivan Collection, your pick of the, uh, proverbial bunch—”

“You speakin’ for the Collector, now?” The Soldier’s tucked near the seam of the broken window, a shadow against the orange-cream wall and casual observer of the melee below. Mostly, Steve knows—or Captain America knows—that he’s watching for any secondary attacks from the air. The threats inside have already been neutralized: two guards, knocked out, and the rest of the room’s occupants—bejeweled and colorfully dressed—clustered in the opposite corner, menaced by the deliberate flip of the Soldier’s knife. “Next you’re gonna say you’re on speakin’ terms with The Black Order—”

The Grandmaster scratches his eyebrow. “No one’s on speaking terms with The Black Order. Taneleer and I, though, we’re brothers, so—bit of a different dynamic there. I’m sure he could get you whatever you need in exchange for my promised survival.”

Someone in the corner coughs.

“And, of course, the promised survival of my most loyal and wonderful subjects, because I am a _fair_ and _just_ ruler.”

There’s a smattering of delicate applause and the Grandmaster inclines his head selflessly.

“We want three things,” Steve says, stance steady, heartbeat thrumming in the grip of his fingertips. “And lucky for us, you should be able to help with all of them direct.”

“Yes, great, wonderful.” The Grandmaster attempts a smile but it droops almost immediately into a grimace. “You really planned out this little coup d’état well, didn’t you? Bit of an outside-inside job, eh, Corporal America?”

“One.” Steve jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Override the obedience discs for all the arena participants.”

“Well, ok, that seems a bit unsafe, don’t you th—”

The air whistles. With a soft, fleshy _thump_ , the Soldier’s knife embeds itself between the vee of the Grandmaster’s raised arm and his chest, biting into the skin of the couch. Steve flattens his mouth. The Soldier shrugs.

“It slipped.”

Steve digs it out and tosses it back. The Grandmaster swallows, fiddling with his collar. “Posturing, it’s—cute, ha, isn’t it.” He reaches into the glittering folds of his robes. Steve tightens his grip on the shield, drifting forward in a warning, but the Grandmaster only pulls out a purple wand similar to Topaz’s. With little flourish, he presses the button on top. The battery pack lights up and winks out. “There. I think it’s important to note here, in the coming hours, that I just helped this little revolution along, so to speak, and—”

“Shut up,” Steve says, glancing back. In response to his unspoken question, the Soldier flashes the pronged obedience disc between his metal fingers, freed from his neck. Steve nods. “Two. We need a ship.”

The Grandmaster flaps a hand.

“And three.” Steve inhales. “We need the map.”

Topaz chooses that moment to burst into the suite, panting madly. “They’ve started a revolution!”  

The Grandmaster stares at her for several long, uninterrupted seconds before shaking his head unhappily at Steve.

“She knows how I feel about that word.”

 

“Now this one, this one is quite a—quite a catch, really. My premiere leisure vessel. It’s—Topaz, tell them.”

“He uses it for orgies.”

“Topaz!”

“I’m sorry. Consensual sex parties.”

“I would rather fly in one of Howard’s planes after a USO show,” the Soldier mutters, tapping Steve’s shoulder and pointing to a gloomy corner of the gaping hangar where an orange-and-blue glider sits innocuously in the shadows. “That one, the Ravager M-ship. It’s enough of a junker that no one’s gonna bother tryin’ to steal it once we leave Sakaar.”

Steve nods. “That just leaves—”

The Grandmaster, attempting to slink away using Topaz’s bulk as a cover, stops abruptly at the yawning, trembling noise of the shield slamming into the walkway.

“—the map.”

“Well.” The Grandmaster clears his throat, turning to wave fingers in Steve’s general direction. “You heard the Corporal.”

Topaz gives a dour tug, releasing the folded paper from her pouch.

“Topaz,” the Grandmaster nudges after a beat. “Give the man his map.”

“I don’t want to catch what he has.”

“Here,” the Soldier snaps, stepping forward to jerk the paper from her grip and deftly moving closer to the Grandmaster in the process. It’s a smooth bit of work—almost as smooth as the way he immediately drops the map into one of his pockets.

“You know, that thing, it’s, it’s a beacon.” The Grandmaster scratches behind his ear. “The entirety of Marvel will come after you to get it, and a lot of the guys out there aren’t as nice as me—”

The Solider pats him genially on the shoulder. “I think we’ll manage,” he says, holding up Topaz’s purple wand.

The Grandmaster’s eyes bug, tracking to a spot on his upper arm where an obedience disc has already bitten through his robes.

The Soldier presses.

 

“You couldn’t have waited until _after_ we left to piss him off?”

“And miss an opportunity like that?”

Steve throttles the engine, taking the M-ship into a high arc to avoid the sparking blue beams coming from the dragonfly craft on their tail. He levels off behind their pursuer, riding engine exhaust, and the Soldier lets go two quick blasts from their own guns, shearing its left wing. They watch as it begins a descent towards the desert junkyard below.

“Sakaaran airspace ends in 10 klicks.” The Soldier stops looking at the colorful readout plastered across the clear screen near his elbow long enough to take another shot at a passing glider. Steve tips them sideways; he’d flown those crappy arcade games before, the ones that shoved you into a pod and involved a lot of blind fire. Here, the movements of the ships are less graceful, and definitely less calculated. Everything rests on seizing the right opportunities before those opportunities disappear.

Captain America must be a decent pilot.

“Two more behind,” the Soldier warns, and Steve banks wide, strafing unpredictably to avoid the new bursts of green energy. “Six klicks.”

“Divert power to forward shields.”

“Are you outta your—”

Steve brakes. The M-ship groans in protest, malleable rudders cracking under considerable strain as they try to create air resistance. Two arrow-nosed, star-shaped craft blast by, missing them by a foot.

“Mother _fuck_ ,” the Soldier bites, redirecting the energy. The readout by Steve’s elbow flashes in confirmation.

“Thanks,” he answers cheekily, slamming the acceleration.

The M-ship jumps forward with a warm roar. Through the curved bubble of the front windshield, Steve watches the yellow craft getting closer, and closer, and—

“Not all of us have nine lives, Cap!”

Steve slices sideways, ramming them both. The smaller ships careen away wildly.  

“Three klicks, you crazy fuck—”

Steve grins over his shoulder, pushing forward until suddenly, abruptly—

Space.

Miles of it.

The dark, syrupy stretch of a million stars shot through with nebulae in shades of dying summer grass and the Hudson river at midday. He eases up on the throttle, fingers clenched uncomfortably.

“Any stragglers?”

“Not so far.” The Soldier pauses. “I don’t think they’re too keen on leavin’ Sakaar.”

Steve barks a laugh, disbelieving, his heart hammering high in his chest as the ridiculousness of what he’d just pulled off catches up to him. He scrubs a hand down his face. “Don’t tell me they’re afraid.”

“Alright, I won’t.”

Steve lets go of the controls. His hands are sweaty. The ship, without the perfume of adrenaline, smells like old socks, musty and unused. The Soldier lets out a soft hiss, barely audible except for what Steve assumes is his enhanced hearing; it’s a strange, odd talent, being able to hear a pin drop. He twists in the pilot’s chair.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” the Soldier grunts, sliding the screen near his right arm home and getting to his feet. “I’m gonna case the place.”

Steve cuts the engine, feeling the heavy weight of the M-ship as it settles into the vacuum of space, adrift. He takes a breath. “How about you give me the map, first?”

The Soldier watches him, eyes flat. “How do I know you ain’t gonna run off with it first chance you get? I’m not stupid, Cap. You don’t need me to read it.”

“I guess,” Steve starts steadily, slowly, feeling like he’s navigating one of those choose-your-own-dialogue games and doing a poor job of it, “you’re just going to have to trust me.”

“Right,” the Soldier snorts, reaching up to fiddle absentmindedly with the hinge of his mask. “Because we’re on the same team.”

“Yeah.”

The Soldier’s frown would be invisible except for the furrows driving themselves between his eyebrows. “Figure that trust should be a two-way street.”

Steve stares. The light from the ship’s instrument panels carves its way across the Soldier’s face; here, in the dark, stars pressed close around them, they could be the only two people in the universe. As the silence grows, Steve becomes hyper-aware of the hum of the navigation systems, the soft whir of the Soldier’s metal arm as the plates readjust, the quiet inch of fluid and power traveling through the walls. The ship is alive, and breathing, and waiting for an answer.

“Ok,” he finally says. “Ok.”

The Soldier nods. He turns for the ladder leading down into the hold and Steve settles back into the pilot’s seat to stare out at the stars, an aching bubble swelling in his chest at how real they—

_CRASH!_

 

He finds the Soldier at the foot of the steps, sprawled on the ground like he missed a rung or five. Steve lands lightly next to him.

“’M fine,” the Soldier exhales. “Just need a—just need a minute.”

Steve eases the man onto his back. “Just one.” There’s a spot, warm and wet, across his side. “You got hit. In the opening volley, back at the arena—”

“Must’ve found a way through my gear. It’s fine. ‘M fine.” He shuts his eyes, tapping his metal fingers across the grubby grate beneath him. “I heal fast.”

Steve prods the wound. His fingers, when he pulls them up near his face, shine bloody in the dim cabin lights. It’s the truest thing he’s seen since waking up in a garbage heap.

NPCs aren’t supposed to get hurt; they’re supposed to help you with the enemy AI. They don’t die, and the definitely don’t _bleed_ —

“You’re real,” Steve breathes, crouching back on flat feet. His new body almost can’t hold the posture, too many muscles and too much mass. Something in his stomach curdles: panic, eating the lining and traveling up, up, up—

“Of course I’m fuckin’ real, what’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve presses the back of his wrist to his eyebrow and breathes. _One. Two. Three. Four. Five._ Then he reaches, hauling the Soldier upright, catching the metal arm around his shoulders and hobbling them both towards the bunks at the rear of the ship.

“You don’t work for S.H.I.E.L.D., do you?”

“I worked for a lot of stupid organizations but no,” the man has the decency to look guilty, “never that one.”

“You lied.”

“Cap, I woulda said you sang like Vera Lynn if it meant I got to stay close to that map.”

Steve helps him collapse against the cylindrical orange cushions. “Did you pull the Winter Soldier out of your ass, too?”

“‘Course not. My best girl gave me that codename. Had to work a lotta solo missions during European winters, sneakin’ behind enemy lines. Spent most of the time freezing my ass off and complaining about frostbite. Guys thought it was a hoot.”

“What about,” Steve taps the wings on the man’s metal arm. 

“Unit’s old insignia.”

Steve frowns, feeling like he’s missing a piece of the puzzle. There’s a tape deck behind the man’s head. Inside is RAD MIX VOL. 1. The faux-wood paneling is dusted with Lisa Frank stickers and lined with old Pokémon cards; a long-dead Tamagotchi and a VHS from Blockbuster sit on the ledge beneath it. “So,” he finally exhales. “You got a name?”

The man doesn’t answer, digging into one of his pockets and emerging with a rectangular envelope, yellowing paper pinched delicately between his metal fingers.

 

  **FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY**

**5 Grams Crystalline**

**SULFANILAMID**

**H. W. & D. **

 

Steve wants to ask him where he got a WWII med kit. Instead—“Ok, fine, Sergeant Screamin’ Eagle it is.”

“Bucky,” the man says. He reaches up to tug the mask off. “My name is Bucky.”

His face, a study in expression, gives up more than his words ever could—the whole picture, painted by the shadows of his long hair, the stubble across the bottom half of his face, the cleft in his chin. Those tired, mercury eyes. The world sitting at the corner of his lips, the weight of it settled near the press of his eyebrows. There’s a vague familiarity about the tilt of his head.

Steve wants a pencil.

“You’re staring,” Bucky mutters, Sulfa clenched between his teeth as he gingerly peels out of his heavy black jacket. Held up to the light, Steve can clearly pick out the sizeable hole that’d been torn through the fabric. Bucky tosses it away. “You think I’m cute or somethin’?” He drags up the thinning ruin of his undershirt. The wound underneath is a pulpy mess.

“Or something,” Steve replies. Into the silence that follows, he blurts: “Steve.”

“What?”

“Steve. I’m Steve Rogers.”

Bucky blinks. Then he rips the envelope open with his teeth and sprinkles the powder over the worst of the blood. “Steve, huh? Could be worse.” He tosses the empty packet near his discarded gear. “Helluva lot better than Captain America.” 

Steve allows it, mouth quirking. “What was with the mask, anyway?”

“Less people who know you here, the better.”

“Seems like a hard way to live.”

“Yeah. Good way not to die, though.” Bucky settles back, lying flat on the bunk and eyeing the tape deck with mistrust.

“You know somewhere we can lie low until you don’t look like you’ve been gored? Figure out our next move?”

He frowns, chin flattening. “It ain’t that bad.”

“You need to wrap it.”

Bucky _pffts_ , closing his eyes.

“Yeah,” he finally sighs. “I know a place.”

 

“Captain America.”

Steve starts, slamming his elbow on the windshield. The ship, auto-piloting towards the coordinates Bucky had given him, remains on a steady course.

“Congratulations on completing the tutorial and retrieving the map,” Agent Coulson says, emerging from the shadows at the back of the cockpit.

“Tutorial?” Steve snorts.

 “Yes. Though your methods were—unusual, Director Fury is pleased with the outcome. He did, however, ask me to relay a message.”

“And what message is that?”

Coulson loses his ever-present amicability. His face turns flat, serious. It doesn’t sit right. “Trust no one.”

There is blood underneath Steve’s fingernails that isn’t his. “I’m not a cynic.” 

“We like to think that, don’t we?” Coulson stops above, peering over Steve’s head at the blanket of stars. “I suppose it’s beautiful.”

Steve turns around. The glass is smudged where his arm had been. “I think so.” He rubs his wrist. “Agent Coulson, what happens if I lose all three lives?”

“Then you die,” the NPC replies simply. “Did you think this was just a game?”

The rushing tide of panic swells up his throat. Steve drops his hands, curling his fingers into fists. His heartbeat is unusually steady in his chest.

( _Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum_.)

“I have no plans to die today,” he finally says.

“None do,” Coulson answers. “Good luck, Captain America. We’re counting on you.”

By the time Steve glances behind him, the agent is already gone.

 

Later, Bucky says, “Steve, wake up.”

Steve opens gummy eyes. His mouth is dry, like ash. It takes a moment to place himself: Marvel, the M-ship, Bucky. He frowns.

“Is that a Nirvana t-shirt?”

Bucky glances down. “I guess.”

“Do you—” Steve flounders awkwardly, working out a kink in his neck. “—like them?”

“I found it,” Bucky answers, frowning at the dead-eyed smiley face. He looks offended. “Anyway. We’re here.” He gestures vaguely out the window and Steve finally focuses on the view.

“Holy shit.”

It’s a skull. Well—not _just_ a skull. The biggest skull he’s ever seen, floating in a dirty-water belch of space dust. It reminds Steve of the Titanosaur at the Natural History Museum, impossibly big and therefore incomprehensible.

“What is it?” he asks.

“The corpse of one of the things that made Marvel. A,” Bucky pauses, “ _memento mori_ or whatever.”

Steve almost laughs. He can practically feel Bucky’s smirk.

“Welcome to Knowhere.”

 

 


	10. eight/

There’s a knock on the door. Sam, busy wearing a groove into the apartment floor, throws it open almost immediately.

“They said because he’s over 18 and doesn’t have any severe mental or physical conditions there’s not much they can do,” he huffs, before T’Challa can even step inside. His friend raises an eyebrow.

“Did you tell them about the asthma?”

“And the pneumonia, and the hearing loss, and the scoliosis, and the arrhythmia, and the astigmatism—man, fuck the NYPD!”

T’Challa glances over Sam’s shoulder at the off-kilter entertainment unit, the casualties strewn across the floor: the dumpy couch cushions, the knotty blanket, Steve’s mail.

“I was looking for clues, alright?” Sam snaps, stepping into the kitchen. His hangover is at least eight times worse than it was this morning and he’s got an anxiety headache. He helps himself to two more Tylenol, glaring at the dishes in the sink.

“Clues that involve the demolition of Steve’s apartment?”

“People don’t just disappear. _Steve_ ,” Sam amends, scrubbing a hand down his face, “doesn’t just disappear.”

T’Challa wanders forward, stopping in front of the coffee table. He taps a finger against his chin, frowning. “I have asked Nakia to make inquiries through some of her connections.”

“Her connections? What, does she know the mob?”

T’Challa gestures vaguely. “Did you call your nurse?”

“Man, now is _definitely_ not the time—”

“The only place Steve spends more time in than his apartment or Artist & Craftsman is the emergency room.”

Sam digs out his phone.

 

**ME: hey Steve hasn’t been in there, has he? [10:56 A.M.]**

**CLAIRE: No sign of the usual patient. Guessing you guys had a quiet New Year’s? [10:57 A.M.]**

**CLAIRE: Aside from a healthy amount of booze. [10:57 A.M.]**

**CLAIRE: You should’ve come in to get your stomach pumped, I was working. Probably would’ve been very hot. [10:58 A.M.]**

 

“Good news is,” he blinks down at the phone, wishing Claire’s message had come at literally any other time, including or not limited to a funeral or a prostate exam, “Claire is definitely into me. The bad news is that Brooklyn Methodist has not had a visit from its most valued customer.” Sam presses a hand into the counter, leaning hard. “He was staying in last night. He left his fucking _glasses_ here—”

“What if he didn’t?”

“He did, I stepped on them.”

“No. What if he didn’t stay in?” T’Challa turns. “Where would he go?”

Sam thinks about it, attention sliding past his friend, down to the coffee table with its scuffed Super Nintendo and indie board game—

He stops. Meets T’Challa’s eyes.

“Peggy.”

 

“You can’t tell Sharon this.”

“What,” T’Challa smirks, “that you are getting married?”

“I played it _cool_ , ok, and if that’s what these scary-ass nurses needed to hear to get us upstairs—I mean, no offense, but I don’t think your Wakanda Design Group ID badge is gonna pull much rank here.”

“I was going to offer to upgrade their security systems; you’ve just saved me a great deal of money.”

“Seriously,” Sam mutters, as the nurse opens Peggy’s door. He thinks she looks like a Karen, or maybe a Linda—sort of bland, well-meaning, but definitely the type of oblivious that Steve would butt heads with. Sam hadn’t mentioned Steve, though, because Steve is still and will probably always be Public Enemy Number One at Shady Acres. Instead, Sam’s now marrying Peggy’s great-niece and apparently T’Challa’s going to be the best man at their wedding, what exciting news—

“I should warn you, she’s not having a good day. And she had a _very_ ,” Nurse Linda and/or Karen pauses meaningfully, “upsetting encounter with a young man last week.”

“We are not here to upset her,” T’Challa promises. Nurse Linda and/or Karen falls prey to his diplomatic smile.

“Ah, yes, well—Ms. Carter!” she calls. “You have visitors.”

“About bloody time. Hello! Did you finally get the well-oiled machine that is the U.S. Army up and running? We need bloody _transport_. We can’t just sit around waiting for the Red Skull to make a move, you know.”

Sam exchanges a look with T’Challa.

“Thirty minutes,” Nurse Linda and/or Karen says before shutting them in, stranding them in the short, dimly-lit hall painted by the yellow light peeking out from behind the half-open bathroom door. The closet’s shut tight.

“Colonel Phillips?” Peggy’s voice is muddled, like mint leaves in a drink, deep from smoking or time. Sam, who has met her twice before on tag-along visits with Steve and who has been volunteering down at the VA ever since he finished his Masters, takes point.

“Not exactly,” he says, voice steady as he steps into the spotlight of Peggy’s room. He takes in several things at once—the back of the large corkboard leaning against the wall opposite Peggy’s bed; the sad view of air ducts and gravel rooftop, winter-bright outside her window; the charcoal picture on her nightstand that screams _Steve_ in every flowing, precise line—but mostly the way Peggy’s lips press together, the way her face folds like a house of cards in a heavy breeze.  

“Gabriel?” she breathes. “Is that—”

Sam almost winces. “No, ma’am. My name is Sam Wilson. This is T’Challa. We’re friends of Steve’s.”

Peggy blinks. The roots of her hands, the prominent blue veins, are mostly hidden under an old knit blanket. “Are you with the Red Tails? I’m sorry to tell you that we don’t need an escort to the Alps, reconnaissance has shown there to be very little in the way of anti-aircraft guns—”

“We’re on a rescue op.”

Peggy watches them, eyes shrewd. Sam gets the feeling that she isn’t so much losing her memory as she is becoming unstuck in time, the past and present and future happening all at once. He’d read a book about it. It’d been—depressing.

“I would advise you against getting your hopes up. If the Skull has your friend, he is most likely dead. Hydra finds great pleasure in trading lives.” She takes a deep breath. “What did you say his name was, again?”

Sam, with some difficulty, keeps his voice level. “Steve Rogers.”

Peggy frowns. For a moment, she seems to drag herself back to the dismal present—the overturned corkboard, the popcorned ceiling, the hum of her hospital bed, her only two visitors a man she doesn’t know and one she’s barely met—but it passes between one breath and the next. She twists away someplace else. “What was his last known location?”

“The CP.”

“And did he have a mission?”

“No, ma’am.” Sam glances sideways at T’Challa. “He’s just—gone.”

“Vanished without a trace?” Peggy’s mouth twists sourly, regret flooding her features. “I know a little of what that’s like.” She shakes her head, falling into the soft pillow. “If I were you, I’d go to the source. Howard’s investigating it now.”

“Howard?”

“Yes, Howard Stark. Tell him I sent you—he can be a bit of a bloody wanker, but he’s the smartest man I know.”

“Ms. Carter,” Sam says, slowly, “Howard Stark is dead.”

“Agent, if you please.” Peggy doesn’t seem all that surprised by the news. “And if Howard went and got himself killed—well.”

T’Challa clasps his hands behind his back. Sam waits.

“Well, then I would try his son.”

 

 


	11. nine/

Steve ducks his shoulders. He’s too _tall_. He’s not used to being able to see the tops of things.

“Stop walkin’ like that.”

“Like _what_.”

“Like you’re straight outta a repple depple.”

“Excuse me?”

Bucky curls inward, glancing _right-left-right_ before straightening, eyebrow cocked like a dare. Steve, who’s never been good at backing down from anything in his entire life, rolls his shoulders back immediately. Around them, Knowhere’s arteries of hollow bone and reinforced metal teem with alien life, a crowded cesspool of brightly colored stalls, of rich, pungent smells, cracked opulence hawked by every vendor and drowning in flickering neon.

“Well,” he says after a few steps, “I do have a giant target on my back.”

Bucky glances sideways. “How patriotic.” Somehow, he makes the ratty Nirvana shirt look intimidating. Probably because he put his mask back on. “I saw you rip that thing out of midair, you might as well put it back. Wherever—back is.”

Steve doesn’t want to admit that he’s starting to get used to the weight. “How’s the,” he gestures to his own side, settling lamely on, “bleeding?”

Bucky shrugs. “I told you. I heal fast.”

“Yeah, but.” _You’re still human_ , he wants to say, except Bucky laughs darkly, like he’s come to the natural conclusion of Steve’s thought and found it wanting. He cuts right. Steve, following a half-step behind, watches the play of light off his metal arm.

The path curves, widening into an irregular patch of dusty ground blooming between a club and some sort of communications hut. They slip past a hangar full of oblong pods with truncated faces and spindly, energy-beam arms; Steve feels the high whine of their engines in his teeth. Alongside the paint-chipped stucco, underneath the shadow of a towering Lego-block building, the road narrows.

“Look,” Bucky says, after Steve’s ducked something’s waving tentacles and almost gotten hit in the face by a suspicious-looking kebob, “let me do the talkin’, alright?”

Steve holds up his hands, mouth quirked. They’ve emerged on the edge of one of Knowhere’s many plateaus, yellow lights winking in the wake of passing ships or blotted away entirely by the silhouettes moored to the rickety, makeshift dock hanging to their right. Rising on the left is the sleek façade of a bar. The neon flickers crimson above the entrance:

THE RED ROOM.

“This contact of yours.” Steve pauses. “You trust them?”

Bucky doesn’t hestitate. “With my life.”

Steve thinks of Sam waiting in front of the hospital and his gut twists—homesickness or something else, or the sheer enormity of his current situation. It doesn’t really matter either way.

Sam’s not here.

It’d been easier to ignore with an immediate goal. Now, Steve just feels like he’s missing a limb. He lets out a long breath. “Ok, then.”

“Ok,” Bucky agrees, eyebrows rising meaningfully. “Just—try not to piss anyone off.”

 

“You’re really pissin’ me off.”

Steve scratches behind his ear. He hadn’t even opened his mouth. “Sorry. Is this your spot?”

The rat-faced alien bares razorblade teeth, clearly not appreciating Steve’s special brand of sarcasm. “As a matter of fact!”

“Great,” Steve nods, and doesn’t move. Neither, unfortunately, does the fleshy humanoid, who settles more deeply into his glare and takes a large, affected sip of the bubblegum liquid in his cup.

The Red Room is a two-story place in reverse, dug down into Knowhere’s bones: an aborted, table-filled balcony near the entrance and a set of brightly-lit floating stairs dropping down into the bar proper, a wide, open space with high ceilings. Still, it feels dark, intimate, lit oddly by strips of light in shades of aqua and white, orange and yellow.

“You know, I hate Terrans.”

In terms of easy exits, the place is kind of a nightmare; Steve wonders if that’s on purpose. Standing where he is, the best his Captain America brain can do is pick out two air vents and a half-hidden door behind the bar that probably leads to the stockroom. “Oh, good. I was starting to think it was just me.”

 “I don’t _get_ it. Earthers are _weak_.” Rat-face considers. “And squishy.”

Steve frowns down at his new six-pack.

“How come your little backwater piece o’ shit watering hole’s lasted so long, huh? You can’t even make it outta your own solar system!”

Steve ratchets his eyes back to the splotchy skin of the alien’s face, the inkblot pupils bleeding into the dirty-water irises. A refugee. _Or a prisoner_ , Steve thinks. His breath sticks in his throat.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry ain’t gonna bring anyone back!” Rat-face snarls, throwing his drink. Between one breath and the next he’s pushed up onto the tips of his toes, shoving the serrated edge of a needle-nosed knife underneath Steve’s jaw.

“No,” Steve agrees, painfully aware of at least five different ways he could disarm the alien and turn the knife. He keeps his hands at his sides.

“You’re not special!” Rat-face presses. Steve can feel the sharp sting of the blade breaking skin. “I could bleed you out right here and no one would know!”

“I would. Unfortunately.”

Rat-face scampers sideways, startled. Steve blinks, trying to figure out where Bucky had come from—noiseless and casual, either blending in with the crowd around the bar or lurking in the shadows behind the stairs. His arm _whirs_ ; it’s an ominous thing.

“You know me?” Bucky asks.

Rat-face skitters, shoulders bent. “Yes, yes, of course, you’re—but we thought—it’s just that—no one ever makes it out of Sakaar—”

“First time for everything.” Bucky’s cool gaze lands on Steve. “Makin’ friends?”

Steve’s mouth twitches.

“You don’t have the self-preservation God gave a turnip.” Bucky holds out his metal hand and Rat-face obediently drops the wicked checkmark of the knife into it. “Just ‘cause you _can_ walk it off.” He examines one jagged edge.

“You find your contact?” Steve asks.

“ _Da_.” Bucky flips the blade deftly between his fingers. “I like your knife, I’m keepin’ it.”

Rat-face deflates, looking dejectedly at his feet as Steve follows Bucky into the crowd.

“…that was my favorite knife.”

 

The corner of the bar is crowded and noisy. Bucky stops and Steve butts up against his back. The scene paints itself in parts through the forest of heads:  a small table littered with shot glasses and a Crayola-bright alien sitting across from the first human Steve’s seen on Knowhere.

She’s a razorblade, high cheekbones and prominent lips brought into sharp definition by the straightness of her shoulder-length hair and the bangs cutting across her forehead, red like the fiery heart of an explosion or the bright warmth of a gut wound or the soft sigh of burnished copper.

The highlighter alien picks up a shot from the neat line to his right; to his left, a messy jumble of ten empty, overturned glasses. The crowd quiets, watching the thoughtful persistence with which he tips back his drink and then breaking into cheers when he drops it, finished and upside down, back on the table.

The woman waits until the excitement ebbs before picking up her own shot. With a small quirk of her mouth, she knocks it back. Steve clears his throat, crossing his arms high over his chest. Bucky laughs.

The alien reaches forward, slow and deliberate, to grab another glass. A hush falls. He raises it to his lips—

And drops sideways, scattering members of the audience. The cheers for the woman are unsurprised and modest. She gathers her winnings—glittering trinkets, slips of paper, other goods Steve has no name for—and calls flatly, “ _Кто-нибудь еще хочет бросить мне вызов_?”

“ _Я буду_ ,” Bucky calls back.

There’s a small hitch in her movements but she covers it well, expression wiped and neutral as she glances towards them and Bucky, now visible as the gathering parts. She tracks him to the newly-vacated seat. He takes off his mask. 

“Hey, Nat,” he says softly. 

She slams his forehead into the table.

“Fuck!” 

 

“You should think about taking your own advice.”

Bucky shoots Steve a withering look, the impact of which is only _slightly_ lessened by the cold slab of purple-green mystery meat he’s got pressed over one eye. They’ve commandeered one of the shady booths carved into the walls; it gives them a good vantage point, even if it’s cramped. Steve’s knees brush the bottom of the table. He watches, half-amused, as Bucky peels back the tenderloin.

“How’s it look?”

“Like your face got slammed into a table.”

“Goddammit.”

“I wouldn’t feel bad for him.” And this is the redhead, returning from the bar with three square glasses, electric blue liquid sloshing over the sides when she sets them down. “He heals fast.”

“So I’ve been told,” Steve replies dryly, casually moving Bucky’s arm and the mystery meat back up to his face. “It’s why we’re here, actually.”

The redhead slides into the booth, across from Steve and next to Bucky; she gives the latter a deliberate once-over. “You don’t look mortally wounded.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Bucky snaps. “Except for the concussion, maybe—”

“We were, uh, hoping for a place to lie low for a bit,” Steve tries. The redhead smiles. It’s not a nice thing.

“I don’t make a habit of helping strangers. Or,” she cocks an eyebrow at his uniform, “Americans.”

“ _I’m_ American,” Bucky grumbles, dropping his head against the cracked cushion.

“Also a stranger, so that’s two checks against you.”

“C’mon, Nat.”

“Who’re you supposed to be, anyway?” she asks, dragging a drink across the pitted table and subjecting Steve to the full power of her gunpowder stare. “CIA? Special Forces?”

“I’m an art major.”

“That explains the costume.”

“Steve Rogers, ma’am.” He holds out his hand. “Miss. Or, um—”

She takes it, mouth twitching. Her grip is iron. “Natasha’s fine.”

“So can we crash at your place or not?” Bucky asks irritably, breaking up their introduction in his quest for a glass. Steve kicks him underneath the table. Bucky kicks back.

“That depends on the baggage you’re bringing to my door.”

“There’s no baggage.” Bucky elbows Steve. “Right, Steven?”

Steve is a terrible liar. “Right, yeah. No baggage.”

An abrupt flurry of movement draws their attention to the bar’s entrance, where a dark-skinned humanoid wielding a hefty gun steps into view, flanked by five guards whose faces are covered by a lava-flow of armor.

“I am Korath the Pursuer!” the newcomer shouts, voice a rasp. “And on behalf of my master, Ronan the Accuser, I seek two Terrans who hold a map to the Infinity Stones!”

Everyone in the bar turns towards them. Steve, eyes wide and shoulders curling, presses a finger to his temple, suddenly interested in the tabletop. Bucky says, “He must mean some other Terrans.”

“James.” Natasha’s close-mouthed smile returns. “If this Kree doesn’t kill you, I’ll do it myself.”

“Promises, promises,” Bucky sighs, and then chucks his raw tenderloin at the nearest patron.

All hell breaks loose.

 

“Question,” Steve huffs, ducking a fist.

“ _Now_?” Bucky’s knife flashes as he brings the hilt down on someone’s wrist and then up into their chin.

“I thought your name was Bucky.” Steve fists a hand into Bucky’s Nirvana shirt and drags back, catching one of Korath’s blue laser blasts in the center of the shield. The Crayola alien from earlier sways between them, brandishing a chair; Rat-face punches the bartender in the nose.

“My name _is_ Bucky!” As if to prove a point, Bucky throws Steve at the nearest of Korath’s guards, hard enough that they both tumble over the counter. Steve’s on the thing almost immediately, trying to ignore its clicking mandibles as he drives the shield into its face. Bucky drops down next to him, casually stripping the prone figure of its bulky, organic plasma weapon.

“Take a gun,” he tells Steve.

“No, thanks,” Steve tells Bucky.

“You should take a gun.”

“Nope.”

“I don’t understand.”

Steve peers out from behind cover just in time to watch Natasha jump a second guard, catching it around the middle and bringing it crashing to the ground. She rolls free, jamming one of her stun batons ruthlessly into its neck.

Ok, Steve might have a competency kink.

Bucky snipes two quick shots— _bam, bam_ —at a duo aiming to grab her from behind.

Ok, yeah, Steve definitely has a competency kink.

“What’s your.” He clears his throat. “So your name is James Bucky?”

“James Bucky, fuckin’—it’s James _Buchanan Barnes_ , ya moron!”

Steve double-takes and almost gets shot in the head. “James _Barnes_?”

“Well, I ain’t President Buchanan! Shit,” Bucky bites, falling behind cover. “Hey, what. What’s’a matter, you got hit? Steve. Look at me, did you get—”

“ _Sergeant_ James Barnes?”

Bucky pulls back. “How the hell did you know that.”

Steve, thinking about an old black-and-white photo pinned to a corkboard, a bundle of rope and the strap of a rifle, _a right tough bastard_ , is saved from having to respond by Natasha appearing above them.

“This brawl’s lasting a little long, boys.” 

Bucky, wild-eyed and pale, pushes abruptly to his feet, laying down short bursts of covering fire. “Blame Captain America over here, he seems to attract this sorta attention.”

“Hey, I didn’t start this one.” Beat. “On purpose.”

“I keep a few thermal detonators in the stock room.” Natasha swings her baton into Rat-face’s chest when he gets too close. “If we blow this place to hell, maybe they’ll think you two went with it.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Nat—”

She shrugs. “I was getting tired of selling to drunks anyway.”

Steve meets her cool gaze. “You sure?”

“Sure or I wouldn’t’ve said it, Rogers.”

“Alright. You set the explosives. Bucky, get everyone you can outside. Set up as large a perimeter as you can. There a good place to rendezvous?”

“The Iron Lotus. Due east, far enough out of the blast zone. The kind of disreputable establishment that makes its money by ignoring the faces of its customers.” Natasha jerks her chin. “What about you?”

Steve leans forward, spotting Korath near the stairs. “I’m going to keep our new friends occupied.”

 

It’s easy enough to figure out why The Iron Lotus is the wrong kind of disreputable after he comes across the fifth yellow-plated woman, electric blue lips stretched invitingly and hips swaying, both meant to distract from the charging port nailed to her head. Steve’s stomach roils. When someone grabs his wrist from behind, he almost clocks them.

Bucky steps back, hands raised. Steve drops his fist.

“You’d stick out less if you didn’t look so disgusted.”

“I don’t like this.”

“If it makes you feel any better, they’re robots.”

“It doesn’t.”

Bucky steers him into the crowd, ducking past spool-shaped tables drowned in orange neon. “Nat?”

“Finishing with the detonators.”

“Crowd’s all gathered near the dock.” Bucky waves away the inquisitive glance of one of the bots. “You look horrible, by the way.”

Steve realizes he’s still clutching a piece of cybernetic implant that he’d ripped out of Korath’s head. He drops it. “I had him on the ropes.”

“I know you did, pal.”

“Well,” a woman purrs, “don’t you boys look like trouble.”

Steve starts, flushing, but it’s only Natasha, materializing neatly near his elbow with a bottle swinging between her knuckles.

Across the road, The Red Room explodes.

The Iron Lotus has a front row seat to the sunburst that rips through the walls and tears up the concrete, leaving behind a gutted exoskeleton belching flames onto the sidewalk. The heat washes over them a second later. Steve hoists his shield up like an umbrella to fend off the rain of debris; Natasha takes a liberal sip of whatever she’s got in her hand.

“Seems a little dramatic,” Bucky notes, and she laughs. Dark Russian humor, maybe, even as the sordid, shabby patrons of The Iron Lotus begin to panic. A few pieces of twisted metal burn sluggishly on the ground.

“They’ll be someone else on your tail within the hour.” She drags them into the thick of the bubbling anxiety, covering their escape as they angle for the road. “You’re in the endgame now, boys. The only way to stop this is to finish it.”

Warmth crackles on the back of his neck. Just out of the neon reach of The Iron Lotus’ marquee, Bucky asks, “What’s the year, Steve?” 

Steve takes a deep breath. Holds it in his chest. “2019, as of midnight.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, after that.

 

“I’m sorry about your bar.”

Next to him, Natasha shrugs. The roof of the cobbled-together stack they’d climbed is a play of bright lights and inkpot shadows, everything hot and grimy from the crowded view spreading around them in a patchwork of green-tinted industry. He picks out The Red Room, burning like a bonfire.

“Mine is not a life of permanence, Rogers.” She offers him the bottle. “And you’re a terrible liar.”

Steve frowns. The toothpaste-colored liquid scorches down his throat, up his nose. He coughs. She hoists herself onto the lip of the roof and Steve, handing back the drink, fights the urge to grab her elbows.

“Our sloppy ploy bought you guys some time, but not enough. Beating the game isn’t going to be as simple as road tripping across Marvel. You have to be _smart_.” She pokes him between the eyes. “Looking over your shoulder has to become second nature.”

“I’m a soldier, not a spy.”

“I thought you said you were an art major.”

Steve’s mouth twists wryly.

“So.” She crosses her ankles, setting the bottle down next to her with a soft _clink_. “How did you end up here?”

Steve squints at a spot just over her shoulder. “I think Marvel merged with a video game.”

“A video game. Like Pac-Man?”

“ _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D_.”

“Must’ve come out after my time.”

“What time was that?”

“1987.”

“Shoulder pads and cocaine?”

“Please. I would never wear shoulder pads.” She rests her hand around the neck of the bottle, examining it thoughtfully.

“How did you?” Steve asks. “Disappear.”

“I found the game when I broke into Howard Stark’s weapons vault. It was a KGB-sanctioned job. I figure,” she glances up at him, eyebrow cocked, “I should be transparent with you, seeing how Americans get about communism.”

“I missed most of the Cold War.”

“Consider yourself lucky.” She tilts, bangs falling. “What do you know about the Infinity Stones?”

Steve shakes his head. “Not as much as I should.”

“There are six of them. Space, Time, Reality, Soul, Mind, and Power,” Natasha counts off on her fingers. “Get your hands on one, and you’ll be a king. Get your hands on all, and you’ll be a god.”

“It’s the only way to get out.”

She exhales, nostrils flaring. “It certainly looks that way. Look, here’s what I know: Korath’s boss, a Kree zealot going by the name Ronan the Accuser, discovered the Power Stone on Morag; no one’s gotten a bead on the Time Stone in the entire time I’ve been here; and the Collector lost the Reality Stone sometime this week.”

Steve’s mouth tips. “You know a lot.”

“I owned a bar.” She pushes off the edge, dropping lightly beside him. “I’d come with you, but there are some threads I need to pull on first. You think you two can manage?”

Steve shuts one eye. “Well.”

“That’s the spirit.” She pats the silver star on his chest and jerks her chin at the other end of the roof, hidden by a maze of pipes and vents. “Give me five minutes.”

“Go easy on him.”

“Can’t. I like him too much.”

 

Five minutes, and then Steve’s following the acrid, bitter tang of familiar smoke, ducking under a few oddly shaped vents before finding the cherry-end of a cigarette and Bucky, wedged against one of the ducts.

“Natasha’s gone,” he says.

“She’ll be back.”

“I know.”

Steve leans next to him, elbows digging into the metal railing as he listens to the well-known symphony drifting up from below: the rumbling of distant traffic and the steady murmur of a crowd. City noise. The Red Room is nothing but embers.

“So,” he swallows, “you two, do you,” he waves his hand, “fondue?”

Bucky looks like he’s contemplating his life choices, and how they got him here, next to Steve, who is clearly an idiot. Finally: “ _That’s_ the best euphemism you could come up with? Jesus Christ, my _ma_ could do better—and for the record, no, me ‘n Nat do not stop off in Lucerne for late night _fondues_.” He takes a drag of his cigarette. “I love her, but—not like that.”

“I mean, she did slam your face into a table.”

“S’what I get for going after one of the Stones by myself.”

“Is that how you ended up on Sakaar?”

“Nah, that had to do with me trying to melt the Grandmaster.”

“What.”

“Well, it didn’t _work_.”

Steve snorts. Bucky’s metal arm readjusts.

“Shitty view, ain’t it?” he sniffs, hand lifted lazily in the direction of—everything. “I trekked ‘cross half of Europe and poked my way through a good portion of this place and the prettiest view I ever seen was lookin’ down towards fucking Jersey, can you believe it?”

“That’s disgusting, Buck.”

“You think I don’t know that? Jesus.” He reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out a well-worn pack of Lucky Strikes. The edges are crumpled. When he tips the box sideways, Steve only counts two cigarettes through the ripped opening. He shakes his head and Bucky looks mildly relieved as he puts them away. “There I was, ‘cross the river in Camp Shanks, standing at the top of this godawful hill.” He takes a drag, throat working, ember momentarily brightening the dark bruises under his eyes. “Yanno, I always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Was plannin’ on saving up to take my—” he exhales “—sisters.”

Steve licks his lips. “Bucky—”

“I knew. I knew.” He taps ash carelessly off the side of the roof. “Time’s bonkers in here.”

“When’d you get taken?”

“1945.” His mouth twists cruelly. “When I met Natasha, found out forty years had gone by without me, you know all I could think? _Least my sisters are probably still alive_.” He shakes his head. “But 2019, now that’s a bit more of a stretch.”

“Peggy’s still around,” Steve tells him, a little desperately. “That’s how I knew who you were, because Peggy talked about you. Sergeant James Barnes—”

“They really let a guy named Captain America into the Army?”

“I didn’t know her in the army. I dated her niece.”

“Christ. Christ, Peggy Carter, she must be, what, ninety years old by now?”

“Ninety-seven.”

Bucky watches his metal fingers, tapping his thumb. His face is a study in understatement, a minute bit of emotion played out in the press of his eyebrows, the quiver of his lip. He hides it fast, hand curling into a fist.

“How is she?”

“She’s got good days and bad days.” Steve reaches up to brush his bangs away and remembers. “She was trying to figure out what happened to you. To everyone who—disappeared.”

“She ever marry Gabe?”

“Huh?”

“Gabe _Jones_.”

“That doesn’t help.”

 “He was this tall, real good with languages—”

“She never got married.”

“Steve, come on. I ain’t never seen two people more in love. It was disgusting. And now you’re sitting here tellin’ me they didn’t have a bunch of scarily competent childr—” Bucky sucks in a breath. He slams his left hand into the metal beneath him, leaving a sizeable crater and mangling his half-finished cigarette. “She shouldn’t have. She should’ve left it alone.”

“Come on, Bucky.”

“No, I mean it.”

Steve wonders if Bucky’s right—wonders how Peggy’s life would’ve shifted without the corkboard, or the knowledge that something she could not explain had eaten her friend.

( _You know, I was going to get married, once_.)

“Goddammit,” Bucky sighs, cradling his bashed cigarette. He glances up. “Got any good news for me?”

“Well.” Steve screws one eye shut. “No more polio.”

“Not quite what I was lookin’ for, but go on.”

“We don’t boil everything anymore. You used to do that, right?”

“Ok, wise guy.”

“And you can sleep with whoever you want, that’s pretty nice.”

Bucky tilts back, expression mischievous. “Seems alright.”

“Oh, yeah,” Steve snaps. “And we won.”

“Won what? Pinochle?”

“The war.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. Steve, watching out the corner of his eye, catches the way his metal fingers prod at the soft, fleshy skin of his right elbow.

“Now that,” he finally says, “is good news.”

It settles between them, this victory that Steve didn’t earn and Bucky paid for in spades. He looks so _tired_. Steve knows, on principle and paper, that life isn’t fair, but being seventy years from home and still fighting seems like an especially cruel twist of fate. He says, “Let’s beat it. Let’s get home.”

Bucky watches him. “You make it sound easy.”

“Well, I didn’t say it’d be a cakewalk.”  

“’Course not. We ain’t that lucky.”

“You with me, Barnes?”

“I got no better plans, Rogers.” Bucky tugs out the map, swinging his legs to either side of the duct and spreading it out between them. There’s a moving blip of purple inching close to KNOWHERE, a curling fog painted twilight orange around VORMIR, a swirling whirlpool of red eating its way across WAKANDA. Steve double-takes at the last: more proof that Shuri’s hijacked video game had been hijacked itself. His stomach aches briefly. Bucky points to a cluster of buildings due north. “Nat said we should stop by Nueva York before things get too hairy.”

“What’s in Nueva York?”

“Tech. Good place to gear up.

“Also a good place to get a Stone.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

Steve presses the pad of his thumb against the bright yellow oval weaving electrical pulses through the skyscrapers. “I’m not.”

“That _rat_ bastard!”

Steve blinks. “Who?”

“Who else?” Bucky scowls. “The guy who made Nueva York. Tony Stark.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	12. ten/

[TRANSCRIPT]

RYAN: This week on Buzzfeed True Crime we cover the mysterious disappearance of Tony Stark.

SHANE: Coincidentally in time for its 20th anniversary.

RYAN: Coincidentally, yeah, sure.

SHANE: You know, I don’t—I don’t know a lot about this Tony Stark character, but my money’s on a secret life in Bora Bora. He’s probably fine. Probably drinking mojitos.

RYAN: Yeah, we’ll see if you still think that in a second. Let’s get into it.

After surviving the tragic car crash that caused death of his father, Howard, and his mother, Maria, in 1991, 21-year-old Anthony Edward Stark took over Stark Industries, which at the time was the biggest weapons developer in the United States.

SHANE: He was 21?

RYAN: I know.

SHANE: Yeah, when I was 21 I was—I was pounding back shots.

RYAN: I mean, Tony Stark was probably doing that, too. He was a well-documented alcoholic.

SHANE: Ok, that makes me feel better.

RYAN: Stark quickly ushered in a new era to his father’s legacy, creating smarter weapons, advanced robotics, and satellite targeting. This continued for seven years, until December 1998, when, during a New Year’s Eve Party Stark was throwing at one of his mansions in Westchester, New York—

SHANE: _One_ of his mansions?

RYAN: Yeah, the guy had, like, six. To be fair, he inherited this one from his dad.

SHANE: Ok, yeah, that totally makes it fair.

RYAN: —until December 1998 when, during a New Year’s Eve Party Stark was throwing at one of his mansions in Westchester, New York, he disappeared.

SHANE: You totally surprised me there.

RYAN: Just listen, because this is where it gets weird.

Tony Stark’s physical presence at the mansion was corroborated by several witnesses, most of whom described his behavior as ‘erratic’ and ‘out of control.’ Stark became increasingly inebriated as the night wore on, even going so far as to put on a prototype defense suit he had been building on commission from the United States Army—specifically for his best friend, Colonel James Rhodes—and blowing up a watermelon.

SHANE: A what! He blew up a what!

RYAN: Stark would eventually retreat to his lab. A timeline of the party put together by investigators indicates that Virginia “Pepper” Potts, Tony Stark’s longtime girlfriend, was the last one to see Mr. Stark alive, when she went down to his workroom at approximately 11:47 p.m. Ms. Potts would go on to claim that Tony vanished at approximately 12:02 a.m.; however, Stark’s disappearance wouldn’t be reported to authorities for another hour.

SHANE: Hm, that’s suspicious.

RYAN: Wait, just wait.

Ms. Potts claimed the delay in notifying the police occurred because she was attacked by at least twelve venomous spiders that were ‘the size of small dogs.’ These spiders were never located, though one Stark employee did support her testimony: Mr. Stark’s driver, Happy Hogan.

On further investigation of the lab, authorities did find signs of a struggle but, strangely, no blood.

SHANE: She sounds awfully suspicious.

RYAN: You’re really gonna freak out with this next bit.

SHANE: What’s that?

RYAN: Public speculation ran rampant, especially after it was revealed that Ms. Potts had been named the sole executor of the Stark estate in Stark’s will; many tabloids cited her report of ‘giant spiders’ as proof that she had experienced some sort of mental break at the time of Tony’s disappearance.

SHANE: That woman is guilty!

RYAN: There are other theories, though—

SHANE: No! She did it!

RYAN: But it was never proven. And I don’t—I don’t know, she started the Stark Foundation, and that gives money to like, a million highly vetted charities—

SHANE: Guilty.

RYAN: But, consider this—all of Tony Stark’s cars were in the garage, and all of his credit cards were accounted for. No money was touched in his accounts. None of his clothes were missing.

It was like he vanished off the face of the earth.

 

[…]

 

“Be cool, be cool, be cool.”

“I am being very cool.”

“Shit, who’s that?”

“Quiet.” T’Challa rolls down the window and slides his Lexus to a smooth stop next to a barrel-chested, sharp-suited man standing by the little guard booth at the front gate. Sam, jaw set, looks straight ahead. “Hello.”

“Uh, yeah, hi. Happy Hogan, Head of Security. You paparazzi?”

Behind the wrought-iron, Stark Mansion is a stoic, stone-faced thing that looks more like a fortress under siege than a home.

“No. I am T’Challa, head of the Wakanda Design Group. Ms. Potts is expecting me.”

Happy Hogan leans down, squinting into the car. “Who’s he?”

“Sam Wilson.” Sam turns his head, mouth flat as he channels _badass_. “Bodyguard.”

“You don’t look like much of a bodyguard.”

“And you don’t look much like a forehead of security.”

“That’s Head of Security,” Happy frowns. “Wait here, I’ll see if she’s expecting you.” He disappears into his little booth and Sam hears the distant, tinny ring of a speaker.

“Ah,” T’Challa tuts. “Must you antagonize him?”

“I do so look like a bodyguard. A really hot bodyguard. You’re welcome.”

Happy reemerges, scowling bodily. “Uh, yeah, so, Virginia’s expecting you—”

“Excellent. Thank you so much for your—”

“Hold up.” Happy grips the doorframe, leering. “I just want you to know. There are cameras everywhere. I can see everything. If you turn out to be paparazzi—”

“Let me guess,” Sam deadpans, “you got a very particular set of skills?”

“As a matter of fact—”

“Your concern is admirable, Mr. Hogan. You are a credit to your profession.”

T’Challa’s flattery goes a long way: Happy sniffs, a little less prickly as he steps back and waves them through.

 

“Do you think she did it?”

T’Challa, hands clasped behind his back, arches an eyebrow. “This woman has donated most of Stark’s fortune.”

“That’s something a killer would do. You know. Guilty conscious,” Sam mutters as a figure darkens the doorway. 

Virginia Potts is a willow branch in yoga clothes, copper hair pulled back high on her head and sleeves fraying, a picture of polite wariness as she opens the door. She could be any slightly harried soccer mom dropping their kid off for practice, except for her eyes: the warm blue of a sun-drenched ocean and the hollow echo of a haunting. Sam’s seen enough guys suffering from PTSD down at the VA to know that trauma doesn’t always reveal itself the same way, but that the eyes—the eyes have a hard time hiding.

“Ms. Potts,” T’Challa greets warmly, holding out his hand with a pointed glance at Sam.

“Virginia, please.” She takes it. “Thank you so much for driving all the way out here. I don’t—travel particularly well.” She pauses, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Sam notices the very deliberate way her feet don’t cross onto the front step. “And you are?”

“Sam Wilson, ma’am.”

“Sam, hi.” She watches them. “I’ll admit, I was a bit surprised to get your call about the Stark Foundation partnering with the Wakanda Design Group, but I think—”

“Virginia, I am afraid we misled you over the phone. I would,” T’Challa holds up his hands at her sharp look, “be more than willing to partner with the Stark Foundation for any number of fine causes, but today we come to you with one of your own. Our friend, he is missing.”

She inches the door towards her like a shield. “Then I think that you would do best to call the police.”

“Already did,” Sam says. “Not much they can do for someone who’s vanished into thin air.”

“Look, I would be more than happy to connect you to the proper channels, but I don’t appreciate being lied to. If there’s nothing more, then I think—”

Sam wedges his foot in front of the jamb before she can slam them out.

“The guy who disappeared, he’s good friends with Peggy Carter. She told us that Tony Stark might know a thing or two about what could’ve happened to him, but Tony Stark’s gone, which means the only person who can help us is you.”

The blood is steadily draining from Virginia’s face; it makes her eyes look too big, and her cheeks too gaunt. Her hair is almost orange. She swallows, blinking rapidly. “I can’t—”

“Please.” Sam stays where he is. “Please. He’s my best friend. We’re just trying to figure out what happened.”

Virginia searches his face. Finally—

“I think you’d better come inside.”

 

“It took me a—long time to come down here. I don’t live in this part of the house. Occasionally Happy will commandeer Rhodey to knock away some of the dust, but only upstairs. I’m sorry about the mess.”

Her sneakers crack like knuckle bones over a waterfall of shattered glass, knocked out of the large panes looking onto the wide workspace. T’Challa glances back at Sam just as she hits the lights.

They flicker on slowly, a loud hum that illuminates a row of garishly colored 90s-era sports cars with their popped-up headlights and rounded back ends and battle wounds: snapped off side mirrors, dents, a broken windshield. Tables closer to the shattered entrance are covered with a noticeable layer of dust, treads, soldering irons, wrenches, a weird and clunky boot. A sitting area to the right is dominated by a couple of museum-quality, if grimy, pieces that would probably give Steve a heart attack and also a sad looking robot, nothing but a single arm piece pointed glumly at the floor.

In the center of everything, hanging in parts from the ceiling, is a red-and-gold suit, eerie and empty, its eye slits lifeless.

“Anyway, when I did finally come down here, I found some of Howard’s old things. There’s only one person on earth I could imagine them having any sort of meaning for, so I had Happy deliver them to Ms. Carter.” Virginia pauses near the edge of a table, picking up a wrench with a strange sort of gravitas. “I really don’t know what else to say.”

T’Challa considers. “Perhaps if you tell us what happened to Mr. Stark…?”

Virginia opens her mouth. Then she closes it. Then she looks up at the ceiling, blinking fast. “I’m sorry, it’s been—so long, I thought I was—I thought I was getting better.”

“Some stuff never really leaves you; you just got to learn how to carry it.” Sam feels the glass crinkling under his sneaker as he steps forward to gently take the wrench. “But you don’t have to carry it alone.”

Virginia presses a finger hard underneath her nose, pinky shaking. “It’s just—he was acting odd, before it happened—the New Year’s Party, writing me into his will. He tried to make me eggs. We were going to Monaco for a business trip, and he tried to make me eggs. On the plane.”

“That’s—sweet?”

“He burnt them.”

“But he tried.”

“He ‘tried.’” Virginia points to the suit strung up like a dead man. “The night he disappeared, I found him down here trying to get _that_ off. He’d broken into Howard’s supposedly secure weapons vault a week earlier. He was attempting to clean it out. He wanted to sell this place and move to Malibu.”

Sam grins. “Can’t blame a guy for wanting that.”

Virginia arches an eyebrow, and something comes through her expression: something unbreakable, something vibrant. When it disappears, Sam can almost feel the weight of her past settling back into place.  

“That night, Tony started playing with one of Howard’s old inventions. One thing led to another, and before I knew it I was,” she takes the wrench back from Sam and sets it gently down on the table, “attacked. When I tried to find Tony he was gone.”

“What was it?” T’Challa asks. “The invention?”

“I thought—when I sent it off, I didn’t think it had any power left. Like a dead battery. If I had known—” Virginia shakes her head, brow furrowing. “But it was a board game.

“Just a board game.”

 

“Odd or even?”

“Sam.”

“Odd or even, T’Challa?”

T’Challa sighs. “Even.”

Sam flashes one finger and T’Challa flashes five and Sam goes, “Dammit.” With a magnanimous tilt of his head, T’Challa pulls Shuri’s game system off the top of the board and into his lap. His face is _I’m-on-this-conference-call-with-Important-People-stop-encouraging-my-sister-to-blow-things-up_ serious. It’s _what-if-this-doesn’t-work_ serious.

It’s _don’t-get-your-hopes-up_ serious.

Well, too late for that.

“Here goes,” Sam breathes, flipping open the side panels, except—

It’s empty.

“What the hell,” he mutters, lifting the game up so he can frown down at its insides, nothing but a rectangle of unfinished wood. “Weren’t there tokens before? And there were definitely spaces. And instructions. Do you remember—what?” Sam breaks off, catching T’Challa’s look.

“I believe it had a name?”

Sam sets the game back down and shuts it tight. It takes a second for his brain to register what he’s seeing.

The lacquered front, completely smooth and impossibly blank.  

“Ok,” Sam nods. “Ok, I’m officially over this. Who the hell do we even—do we call a psychic? I don’t know any psychics—”

“Sam.”

“—I should call Claire. I feel like Claire would know what to do, she’s pretty level-headed about weird shit—”

“Sam.”

“—unless we should call Jane, because Jane has a doctorate, and she talked to me for thirty-five minutes about wormholes at your cocktail party—”

“ _Sam_.”

“ _What_.”

T’Challa turns the Super Nintendo; Sam squints at the cartridge. It’s worn and red. The label reads—

“Oh, you gotta be shitting me.”

T’Challa sets it down on the table, reaching for the POWER slider.

“That’s not gonna work, I unplugged everything from the—”

A red light on the console flashes. The TV _clicks_ on. 

“—wall,” Sam finishes dumbly, watching the fuzzy picture materialize.  

 

**MARVEL**

**CHOOSE your CHARACTER**

 

**> FALCON: Ornithologist – Pilot**

**~~> CAPTAIN AMERICA: Super Soldier – Master Strategist~~ **

**> MARIA HILL: Spy – Killer of Men**

**> SCARLET WITCH: Magician – Avenger **

**> BLACK PANTHER: King of Wakanda – International Explorer  **

**ENTER CODE: _ _ _ _ _ _**

 

“I think,” he breathes, swallowing thickly as he meets T’Challa’s gaze, “you should call your sister.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	13. eleven/

“ _Well, it seems so real—I can see it. And it seems so real—I can feel it—”_

“Here.”

Bucky, lounging sideways in the pilot’s chair and frowning up at the speaker system, starts as Steve tosses a jacket over his face. Outside, the sky is the color of robins’ eggs, clouds twirling in streams past thewindshield. He peels away the soft, patchwork leather with a frown.

“You can’t keep fighting in a t-shirt,” Steve explains.

“Even an enlightened t-shirt?”

“Wrong Nirvana.”

Bucky sits up, tugging the knife from his thigh holster. He sets about removing the left sleeve, deftly plucking at the seams. “And you don’t think me fightin’ in Ravager gear’ll give people the wrong idea?”

“Ravager?”

“Looters. Scavengers.”

“I mean.”

“ _And it seems so real—I can taste it. And it seems so real—I can hear it—”_

The Buzzcocks, coming from the tape player on the deck below, sound plaintive and utterly human; the juxtaposition isn’t lost on Steve. He scrubs a hand down his face.

“How much longer?”

“Straight on ‘til morning.” Bucky tosses him the knife hilt first. Steve catches it on reflex as Bucky stands up to admire his handiwork. “Had me a coat this color in the war.”

“Fashionable.”

“Well, _yeah_. Howard designed it.” Bucky slides into the midnight-fabric metal arm first. “Guy designed all our uniforms, on account of he couldn’t be seen in public with us otherwise. The Army stuff gave him conniptions. Also rashes.”

Steve shakes his head in sympathy. “Allergic to wool?”

“Allergic to rules,” Bucky corrects.

“He design that, too?” Steve reaches over to tap the dull edge of the blade against the crooked wings decorating Bucky’s silver bicep.

“Probably. I told ya it was my unit’s old insignia—”

“The Invaders?” Steve raises his hands to ward off Bucky’s look. “Peggy had your file.”

“Bettin’ a lot of that’s still classified, Rogers. Stuff we did wasn’t pretty. Doubt Uncle Sam wants it in the history books.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, thank whoever the fuck for small miracles.”

“ _So why can’t I touch it?”_

Steve wants to ask about the war in a purely academic sense. Something about the lonely heroism of boys enlisting just to be blown up on the beaches of France; something about bullies. Something, too, maybe, about what if felt like to know the guy next to you better than you knew yourself. Still, he keeps his mouth shut. It seems too callous, and too fresh around the corners of Bucky’s eyes. He says, instead, “I could touch it up, if you wanted.”

“You weren’t lyin’ about the art thing?”

“Why would someone lie about being an art major? That seems counterproductive.”

“I dunno. Maybe you wanted to impress me.”

“Maybe that bar’s so low I could step over it.”

They’re very close. Bucky realizes this at the same time as Steve, or maybe Steve realizes this at the same time as Bucky—either way, neither do much about it. Steve can’t, pinned through by the tilt of Bucky’s head, by his half-lidded eyes and his snort.

“Actually, I was thinkin’ ‘bout replacing it with ‘Kilroy was here.’ Or maybe a star.” Bucky knocks a knuckle against Steve’s uniform. Steve feels it in his gut. He swallows.

“A snowflake.”

“Now you ain’t makin’ any sense.”

“You’re the _Winter_ Soldier.”

“Alright, _Captain_ America, that mean I get to tattoo the American flag on your ass?”

“Hilarious.” 

“ _So why can’t I touch it?”_

Steve carefully flips the knife, sliding it into the sheath on Bucky’s thigh. It makes a noise like a sigh, like a whisper. Bucky’s arm recalibrates. Steve licks his lips and thinks _tell him you don’t look like this, tell him everything special about you was programmed_ except—

“What’s that?” he veers, frowning out the windshield. Bucky, a second slower, almost knocks his forehead into Steve’s chin as he follows.

“It’s a little one-inch man.”

“A one-inch man, Bucky, really.” 

Bucky squints. Then he goes, “Uh-oh,” and turns abruptly to the pilot’s seat.

“What?” Steve asks, throwing himself into the navigator’s chair. “What is _uh-oh_ —”

“Looks like Stark finally got his security system up and running, the paranoid bastard.”

On cue, the lights on all the instrument panels flicker, and the Buzzcocks’ plaintive performance is replaced by the polite tones of a wealthy-sounding British man who declares, “Hello. You are entering restricted airspace. What is your callsign?”

Bucky bug-eyes over at Steve and Steve shrugs helplessly back. Outside, the little one-inch man is slowly growing into a regular-sized man, a beetroot figure with a fluttering golden cape.

“Uh.” Bucky presses his temple, metal hand flexing on the controls. “This is the Grable, carrying passengers Steve Rogers and—”

“I’m sorry, but your callsign is not recognized. Please turn around now or prepare for countermeasures.”

“Stark, it’s _Barnes_ —”

“Countermeasures engaged.”

“Oh, Christ.”

Steve tries to divert power to the forward shields but nothing responds as the man leans forward and shoots toward them like an arrow. “Incoming, twelve o’clock—”

“No _shit_ ,” Bucky bites, attempting to wrest back flight controls. Steve, wishing the game thought to equip him with a _goddamn parachute_ , surges to his feet, equipping the shield and curling towards Bucky as the flying figure reaches the windshield—

The ship sighs, molecules rearranging as the temporarily insubstantial figure floats into the cockpit. For one brief, impossible second, Steve meets the man’s eyes. They are blue, measured and considering; the yellow jewel in his forehead pulses. Then he’s gone, phasing through the back just as the stretch of peaceful sky outside is replaced by an abruptly crowded cityscape. Steve goes, “Bucky—” and turns into a warm breeze.

“Did you fall asleep, baby?”

Sand, pleasantly warm, cascades down his back as he sits up. The ocean stretches in front of him for miles.

“Not that I blame you,” Sarah Rogers says, almost conspiratorially as she folds down next to him. “It’s such a beautiful day.”

Music drips lethargic from the boombox to his right, belonging to a couple spread out on pastel terrycloth in high-waisted bathing suits. The woman, hair rolled artfully and lips the color of blood, smiles prettily at Steve as she reaches forward to turn up the volume.

“ _Then it looks so real—I can see it. And it feels so real—I can feel it—”_

“Here.” Sarah Rogers makes to shake away the rest of the sand trapped in his hair. “Remember when we thought you’d never hit your growth spurt?”

“ _And it tastes so real—I can taste it. And it sounds so real—I can hear it—”_

He takes a breath, clean and easy; someone’s snapping pictures. _Flash, flash, flash_. They sound like gunshots.

“Everyone’s here,” she tells him. “No one’s leaving you behind.”

He feels like he’s missed an important part of the conversation, too caught up in the play of light off the water, the quiet hiss of the waves up the beach, the screams from the Cyclone. The slap of someone’s hand against a volleyball sounds like a punch. He twists to take in the game behind him: a lazy, easy thing around the sagging yellow net against. There’s Sharon, and T’Challa, and Shuri; there’s Sam, waving him over.

_“So why can’t I touch it?”_

“You can stop fighting,” Sarah Rogers tells him, taking his hand. “Everyone’s here.”

“Not everyone.”

“What?”

“Not everyone.” His head begins to pound: _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_. “Not everyone, where’s—”

Steve opens his eyes.

The Grable has charted a course for a _really_ bad landing.

“Bucky!” he shouts, just as the ship takes an unexpected dive. Steve’s flung into the ceiling and barely manages to disappear his shield before it takes out all his teeth. Bucky, somewhere between catatonic and dead weight, isn’t so lucky—he slams into the curved metal of the Grable’s hull.

Steve immediately scissor kicks towards the pilot’s chair, but not even Super Soldier thighs can fight gravity, or physics, or whatever the hell force is keeping him pinned to the ceiling. He careens sideways, straight into Bucky. The fast crawl of his stomach up his throat is replaced by the _drip, drip, drip_ of leaky pipes.

He’s standing in a long hallway. Everything is brick, shiny and slightly damp. A few rusted cabinets sit at the far end, blocky shapes in the dark. The overhead lights are out, but a sickly, yellow-green glow bleeds around his boots. There’s an open door twenty feet to his left.

Steve can hear voices.

“…adverse reactions. Internal bleeding, extreme fever—”

“Perhaps you are being too tentative with your test subjects.”

“Well, I hardly want to destroy our workforce.”

“There are always other battalions, Dr. Zola.”

“Yes, of course, but I—Herr Schmidt, I fear it is not the subject, but the serum. If I could have but more time to perfect the formula—”

“Time is not a luxury we can afford, Doctor. Our weapons will only get us so far. Every day without our _Übermensch_ means a greater chance of being eclipsed by Hitler’s curs or the nauseating idealists on the other side of the Rhine.”

“Yes, but without Erskine’s notes—”

“I want results, Doctor, not excuses.”

“I—yes. Yes, of course. The first trial was not a complete failure.”

“You are referring to this one?”

“Yes. He is the only one that survived the injection.”

“He appears…unaffected.”

“The serum amplified your natural magnificence—this man has none with which to work with.”

“So it would seem.”

“I will, of course, be running more tests to examine the extent to which the serum integrated itself with his existing physiology.”

“This project may be salvageable yet, Doctor. Fortunate, for your sake.”

Steve ducks into the shadows as two figures emerge from the room. With their backs turned, they’re nothing but colored silhouettes heading down the hall—one short and stout in a white lab coat, the other tall and lean in a black military uniform. As he watches, the tall one’s gait slows.

He turns.

Slashed by the shadows and far away, Steve can only make out a gaunt cheekbone, a heavy brow, a gaping pit where the man’s nose should be, everything a kind of mottled, muscle-red. He holds his breath as the man meets his eyes.

“—Herr Schmidt? Is something the matter?”

“Not at all, Doctor,” Schmidt says, spinning smartly. “Not at all.”

_Drip, drip, drip_.

They disappear around the corner and Steve jogs towards the open doorway.

“…Sergeant. 3-2-5-5-7—Sergeant…Sergeant 3…”

The room’s as dimly lit as the hall; it takes him a second to parse out the industrial shelves, the binders, the neatly labeled mason jars full of embalming fluid—

The examination table and the person strapped to it.

“Sergeant 3-2-5-5-7—”

Steve pulls up short, hovering near the man’s shoulder. “Bucky?”

Bucky opens his eyes, unfocused and glassy. Steve almost doesn’t recognize him—his short, sweaty hair plastered back on his forehead, his military fatigues, the shine of his dog tags. He looks so much _younger_. He’s got both his arms.

“Oh, my God,” Steve breathes, ripping off the leather restraints, trying to ignore the menacing reach of the machines hovering overhead. The blackened spotlight. Bucky frowns, dazed, head lolling.

“Is that—”

“It’s me. It’s Steve.”

“Steve?”

“Come on.”

“Steve.”

“Bucky.” Steve grabs his arm. “Come on, we have to get out of—”

“You shouldn’t be here, Steve,” Bucky croaks, forehead furrowing. “You weren’t here the first time around.”

Steve’s chest tightens; he wants to punch something. “This isn’t like the first time around. I promise, Buck, we’re not here—”

Bucky closes his eyes. His mouth presses together. His chin wavers once. Just once. He says, “I’m always here.”

Steve licks his lips, feeling sick. Then he leans down, pressing his forehead to Bucky’s. It’s sweat-slicked, grimy; he smells like a hospital, like blood and dirt. Like a battlefield. Steve nudges their noses together and Bucky opens his eyes. Steve can feel his breath, warm and reassuring.

“Don’t hate me for this.”

“What—”

Steve slams their heads together.

“—the _FUCK_ ,” Bucky shouts, reeling back into the upper corner of the ship. He clutches his head. “What the fuck! Steve, what the fuck!”

“Cognitive recalibration,” Steve grits. “We have a situation.”

Bucky finally notices the view out the windshield, which is namely: ground. “Now is _not_ the time for _understatement, Steven_ —”

Steve makes another pass for the controls and ends up slamming his chin on the ceiling. Bucky, wedged in a slightly more stable position, grabs some of the hull’s chunky rivets and begins inching his way towards the pilot’s seat but not fast enough, Steve can tell it’s not going to be fast enough—

Something jolts against the underbelly of the ship.

A second later, they begin to level out.

Steve drops; Bucky follows. The Grable shakes into barely-controlled glide, clipping the edges of a few glittering skyscrapers. Steve can see the endgame: a wide swath of green. From somewhere outside a metallic voice shouts, “Turn off the thrusters, you dipshits!”

Bucky reaches up to kill the engines. The M-ship slows, bouncing through a leafy canopy. Steve can hear the lower cabins being ripped apart, can _feel_ whatever’s on the hull trying to slow them down from the other side. His teeth clatter together; he might vomit. Bucky fists his flesh hand into the collar of Steve’s uniform and holds on.

Finally, and with a last, shuddering groan, the Grable hits dirt. It grinds to a halt.  

A grimy, golden faceplate appears in the viewport.

“Well, I never thought I’d see the day—Uncle Sam and the Manchurian Candidate, working together. Peace in our time. I _magine_ what your superiors would say.”

“‘You almost killed our best operatives,’” Bucky deadpans.

“First off, that’s a liberal use of the word ‘best.’ Second,” a red hand rises to the glass, letting off a burst of high-whining energy that shatters the windshield, “you both just caused me millions of imaginary dollars in infrastructure repair, so I’d say we were even.”

“You’re not counting psychological trauma,” Steve points out, getting to his feet and hauling Bucky up after him. Outside the fractured hull is a park, crowded with tall, unfamiliar trees except for the broken ruin of their self-made clearing. A few curious faces peer out from the brush.

“I never do. F.R.I.D.A.Y., deploy the Iron Legion.”

“Deploying the Iron Legion, sir,” a female voice, Irish and lyrical, replies. Bucky narrows his eyes at the ceiling.

“Have them start cleanup at 4th Ave. Any casualties?”

“Four wounded by falling debris, but none dead.”

“Get them to the Stark Tower medical facilities—and stand down, Grampa Simpson,” the suit snaps at Bucky, tapping its forehead _clink-clink-clink_. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s my new user-interface. Quick question: does she sound like a redhead to you?” 

“Only redhead I knew was Dum Dum Dugan.”

“Then I pity your incredibly boring life. And to be fair, you were both intruding. Don’t take it out on Vision, he was just doing his job. And don’t take it out on _me_ , American Eagle,” the suit adds off Steve’s look. “It’s kill or be killed out here. Survival of the fittest. The law of the jungle. Everyone’s their own worst enemy—look, I could keep going, but I won’t. I will, however, offer you a formal apology by way of an explanation: we just repelled an attack from Ronan the Accuser, so everyone’s a little on edge.”

Bucky frowns. “You weren’t this paranoid last time I was here.”

“Last time you were here, RoboCop, you were on enough meds to trank an elephant. I doubt you remember much.” The helmet crawls back, revealing a bright-eyed, slightly manic face that Steve is used to seeing plastered across _The National Enquirer_ under headlines like _TONY STARK SPOTTED IN TENNESSEE BY LOCAL BOY, CLAIMS POTATO GUN IS PROOF_. “But I’m guessing you two aren’t here for meatball surgery, seeing as you have all your limbs. Well,” he amends, gesturing to Bucky. “Anyway, since I never see one of you unless you _need_ something—”

“We need your Infinity Stone.”

“—there it is,” Tony Stark sighs. “Never let it be said that I don’t appreciate a guy who knows what he wants.”

Bucky blanches.

“Too much? I know how you and Dad were—”

“We weren’t _anything_ , can you—” Bucky glances sideways, fielding Steve’s amused look. “Howard flirted with everything that moved, and that included planes, trains, and automobiles—”

“Motorcycles, too, but he had a special place in his heart for Sergeant James B. Barnes of the 107th. I should know. He wouldn’t shut up about him, even after he went and got himself sucked into an apparently sentient board game.”

Bucky spares Stark a withering glance.

“Howard, huh?” Steve eyes Bucky’s insignia. “I’m starting to see the resemblance.”

“I’m sorry,” Stark doesn’t sound it, “but who are you, exactly?”

“Captain America. Who are you?”

“Oh, very funny, that’s—you know who I am.” Stark reaches up to pinch his nose and ends up blinking at red-plated fingers instead. “I’m also the guy still dealing with the physical manifestations of his dad’s god complex. F.R.I.D.A.Y., I’m gonna need a psychiatrist after this.”

“I’ll see who I can dig up, sir,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. replies dryly as Steve wanders towards the shattered windshield.

“Where are we?” he asks, examining the balmy afternoon.

“Central Park.” Stark follows his gaze. “Welcome to Nueva York, Cap.”

 

 


	14. twelve/

“God, I hate this place,” Bucky mutters, frowning down at the view: Nueva York from Tony Stark’s high-rise, the ugly monument with his name plastered across the side somewhere in Midtown. This far up, the hard-light roads look like ribbons, the speeders like toys, both of them inching their way between gray-blue skyscrapers. A holographic advertisement for the Tyrell Corporation flashes across the windows of a building to their left, a seductive, pink-skinned woman fondling her breasts; Steve, pressed up next to Bucky on the balcony, looks away. In the misty night, neon glows like fishermen lures throughout the city.

He feels, keenly, all the points where they touch. A gentle warmth. A reminder that the real Manhattan’s out there somewhere.

“C’mon, Buck,” he says at last. “Let’s go inside.”

 

Inside’s not any better.

Everything’s _familiar_ : the concrete floor, the low couch, the shag carpet, the bar. The warm yellow light diffused from the tree-branching chandelier overhead, darkening the view through the windows. Steve feels a strange sense of vertigo as he accepts the tumbler Stark offers him—like this is actually home and catching pneumonia in an undersized body a day (a week? a month?) ago had been the dream.

“I just handed you the finest Sakaaran whiskey and you’re looking at me like I kicked your puppy.”

Stark’s shirt is covered in alien writing, illuminated by the glowing container attached to his chest that had absorbed the bulk of his suit sometime between their leaving the ship and their coming here.

“Was it always like this?” Steve asks, venturing a sip.

Stark points to his feet for clarification. “The city? No. I, ah— _tinkered_ with the Mind Stone a bit. Reverse-engineered a few of its power sets so I could use it to project my memories as constructs in the real world. ‘Real’ here being a relative term.”

“And then you gave it to your guard dog,” Bucky says.  

“Vision’s not my _guard dog_ , Jax, he’s a super-sentient AI who’s made of the strongest metal in Marvel, which pretty much makes him the Mind Stone’s best protector. You should probably back off before he hears you talking shit.”

In response, Bucky reaches behind the bar and proceeds to drink Stark’s finest Sakaaran whiskey straight out of the bottle.

“Jesus Christ, you’re a dick. I’d almost forgot.”

“Boss,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. intones from the ceiling, and Steve takes the opportunity to shoot Bucky his best disapproving look; Bucky gets a kick out of it.  

“Talk to me, F.R.I.D.A.Y.”

“Wounded are coming out of medical now. They’re all stable.”

Stark nods. “And the cleanup?”

“The Iron Legion has collected most of the debris and moved the Grable into Stark Tower’s garage for maintenance. Central Park is going to take a bit more doing.”

“Yeah, remind me to call landscaping in the morning.”

“Will do, Boss.”

“I was being facetious but hey, if you can find someone who’ll clean up a bunch of broken trees, be my guest—”

“So, you’re the—are you the,” Steve waves his hand, struggling to find the right word, “president?”

Bucky spit-takes across the bar. It might mostly be a ploy to piss off certain members of the conversation, but it also might just have to do with the fact that he’s laughing too hard to hold his liquor. Steve, nose warm, kicks him. Stark throws a towel.

“Antiquated concept. Lots of innocent people got swept up into this mess, I’m just trying to make sure they have a safe place to go.”

Bucky gets ahold of himself, giving the black granite counter one forceful wipe before tossing the towel back at Stark. “Why didn’t tell us you had a Stone? You knew me and Nat were looking for them—”

“And now you and Captain Oblivious are looking for them with a _map_ that you’ve had for all of a few days and that’s somehow already brought Ronan the Accuser to my front door. Do you see my dilemma?”

“No.”

“Then you’re a idiot.”

“I think you been outta touch with reality a bit too long, Stark.”

“Reality? _This_ is reality, Barnes. This, this is all that’s left—”

“Not if we collect the Stones.”

“Oh, so it’s that simple.”

“If you hadn’t been hidin’ behind your fancy suits and your goddamn ego you could’ve figured out how to do it a long time ago—”

“Do what? I’m a survivor, Barnes, _this_ is what I do—”

“What about Pepper?”

Stark slams his glass down, jaw working. “She’s already had to bury me once, I can’t go back and make her do it again.”

“That for her benefit or yours?”

Stark’s nostrils flare. The silence snaps, sizzling. 

“You’re the smartest guy in Marvel,” Bucky finally says, voice flat as he grabs the whiskey and walks away. “Figure it out.”

“At least leave the booze, asshole!” Stark shouts after him.

Bucky kicks open the balcony door, raises a casual middle finger, and disappears outside.

“He is one dramatic sonuvabitch.”

“Almost as dramatic as someone who built a monument to themselves in the middle of a copycat New York City?” Steve asks dryly.

“Touché, Duke Nukem.” Stark scrubs a hand through his hair. He sighs. “Come on,” he finally says. “Let me buy you another round.”

 

“Who’s Pepper?”

“A girl.” Stark drops his head on the back of the couch, raising his tumbler so he can peer through the bottom before settling it on his stomach with a sigh. “Who am I kidding— _the_ girl. The kill-you-with-kindness, sharp-as-a-tack, Sam-and-Diane, fireworks-and-champagne, every-Celine-Dion-song-ever-written kind of girl. You know?”

Steve swirls the amber liquid in his glass; he finds Bucky, nothing but a shadowy outline on the balcony. “Yeah.”

“Oh. _Oh_.” Stark wags his eyebrows. “So, your type is tall, dark, and murderous—”

“What did you mean about Pepper already having to bury you once?” Steve blurts, then knocks back the rest of his drink. Stark’s expression dances roguishly. He smacks his lips.

“Answer me something first, Arnold, preferably without deflecting.”

“Arnold?”

“Schwarzenegger. Not my best work—but look, speaking of monikers, I’m _very_ interested in yours.”

Steve sets his glass down on the low coffee table. “Why’s that?”

“Because Captain America was a video game character my dad helped develop in the 80s.”

Steve feels the corner of his mouth rising crookedly. The missing puzzle piece. The reason Bucky’s insignia matched the logo on the game cartridge: Howard Stark.

“Got something you want to get off your chest?” Stark asks. “I mean, you did break through Vision’s visions pretty easily—”

“Got a thick head.”

“Of that I’ve no doubt.”

Steve swallows. “Marvel merged with an old video game called _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ It’s how I ended up here.”

“Son of a bitch. Well, that would explain your irritatingly patriotic vibe and marble-statued, Dorito-waisted figure—I’m assuming it altered your physiology? That’s actually fascinating. This whole place is actually fascinating, when it isn’t trying to kill you.” Stark shakes his head, scrubbing down his face. “I bought a copy of that game. It came out after dear old Dad bit the proverbial bullet. Never played it, but it’s the thought that counts. Or so I hear. If Marvel fused with the shitty thing, it must be getting pretty restless.”

Steve turns. “‘It’?”

Stark doesn’t hear, or chooses not to. He says, “Pepper—you know, she probably had to bury me once already. After I vanished. But even before that—” he breaks off, scratching his chin, dropping his hand to the glowing chest piece so he can tap a nail against the glass. “Palladium poisoning. Side effect of having a battery in your chest. Side effect of surviving the car crash that killed your parents. Pepper didn’t know. I was going to tell her, but then.” He gestures vaguely to his empty penthouse, the neon blood of the city outside. “And now I’m tentatively on the mend, because I’ve got an Infinity Stone to power my arc reactor. Which is a great cure, and the only one that’s stuck so far, except it means, you know, I can’t ever leave.”

Steve sits up. “Tony—”

“So, here’s the Catch-22, Cap. If I help you guys on this suicide mission, and we somehow, miraculously, make it back home, I’m in the same boat I was before. Only now Pep’ll have to say goodbye to me after already, you know—saying goodbye.” Stark turns his gaze to the ceiling. “And then there’s the opposite side of the coin. If I leave, what happens to everyone here? If I give you the Infinity Stone, and you don’t win, how many people in Nueva York are going to die?”

Steve licks his lips. “I think we try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes that might not mean everybody, but if we can’t find a way to live with that—well, then maybe nobody gets saved.”

Stark pinches the bridge of his nose. “Your sincerity is killing me, and also banking on the fact that this game is actually a _game_ and not some psycho’s idea of a supermax prison for the universe’s poor, unfortunate souls. There are just too many variables.”

“We’ve got to take that risk, Tony.”

“You do, maybe.” He cranes his neck. “Look, I want to help. I do. I’ll fix your ship and update your gear, but right now that’s about the best I can do.” 

Steve nods. Stark tosses his glass into the couch cushions, runs his hands over his thighs.

“Come on, General MacArthur, say something. I’m not good with suspense. What’s the verdict? Where’s the jury? I’m giving you complete permission to assassinate my character, which I haven’t given to anyone since _The Enquirer_ —”   

“I don’t want to assassinate anything.”

“Right, no, I forgot, that’s your boyfriend’s territory.”

“Look, Tony, what you’ve done here is impressive. You’re a great man.” Steve’s mouth tips wryly. “Someday you might even be a good one.”

Tony snorts, shutting his eyes. “Yeah. Wouldn’t that be something.”

 

 


	15. thirteen/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now kiss

“We could’ve jumped Stark and taken it.”

“Bucky.”

“Between the two of us—”

“That’s not how we operate.”

“You came to that decision all by yourself, that ain’t very American. I say we put it to a vote.”

“You can’t have a vote with only two people.”

“Says who?”

“Says math? Besides, Vision can _phase through walls_ , what are you going to do, punch him?”

Bucky considers. “Punch him _really hard_.”

“Oh, well, that’s completely different.”

“Ok, wise guy, what do _you_ think we should do?”

“There are five other Stones out there. We’ll focus on those. I think Tony’ll come around.”

“Yeah. But by the time he does it might be too late.” Bucky grins crookedly. “Not all of us have nine lives, Cap. And the one’s who do don’t take very good care of ‘em.”

“I take good care of myself.”

“You got a strange proclivity for violence. Someone’s gotta keep pullin’ your ass outta the fryin’ pan—”

“Hey, pal, I didn’t see _you_ breaking out of Vision’s security proto—” Steve breaks off, stomach dropping. He wishes he could take his foot out of his mouth. Somewhere pipes _drip, drip, drip_. “Bucky, I didn’t mean—”

“S’fine.” Bucky’s playful good humor of before is gone, his face blank. Steve hates himself for putting that look on his face. “I wish you hadn’t seen that, anyway.” The Grable hums, dragging them farther and farther away from Nueva York. “I’m gonna go inventory the gear Stark gave us. Here.” He hoists himself up from the navigator’s seat, tugging the map from his pants pocket and tossing it at Steve. “Jungle’s pretty thick in parts, should provide enough cover; find someplace for us to put down for the night.” 

“Bucky—”

But he’s gone, clomping down the ladder to the hold below. Steve exhales, shutting his eyes and banging his head against the back of the seat.

After a minute, he opens the map.

 

The fire cracks and pops. The jungle would be a tense place without it, or without the Grable’s comforting bulk at their back, ramp extended so the music spilling softly from the tape deck can drown out the snarls, the hoots, the clicks.

Not the crickets, though, Steve thinks, spooning more of the gummy, probably-long-since-expired K-ration that they’d found in one of the ship’s lockers into his mouth. Bucky, sitting on the opposite side of the fire, doesn’t seem to mind. Probably because he’s seen worse.

Steve drops the spoon and sets the bowl on the leafy ground, appetite suddenly gone.

Something _screeches_ , a cassette tape on rewind. Steve jerks his head towards the sound, but all he can make out are oddly shaped leaves and branches.

“It’s an Abilisk,” Bucky says, mouth full and unconcerned. “Feeds off energy. We’re not givin’ off enough to be worried.”

Steve listens; the night shudders, alive. Not even Hall & Oates drifting from the tape deck’s enough to drown it out. (“ _You’re a rich girl, and you’ve gone too far, ‘cause you know it don’t matter anyway_ —”) “You, ah,” he shoves his hands under his armpits, rocking forward, “know a lot about the jungle?”

Bucky arches an eyebrow and continues to eat like he’s trying to feed a family of twelve. “I woke up in the jungle. Spent a good long time gettin’ intimate with its nooks and crannies.” 

“Alone?”

“Well, ain’t like anybody got sucked in with me. Until I found Nat, I was doin’ my best Tarzan impression.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? Tarzan could talk to _apes_ —” Bucky pauses. There must be something on Steve’s face, something about the pipes _drip-drip-dripping_ or a red skull, because he drops the act, grimacing down at his K-ration before tossing the rest in the fire. “I don’t want your pity, Rogers.”

“Good, because I’m not giving it.” Steve drops his hands over his knees, watching sparks drift like fireflies into the air. “That memory was yours, for better or worse, and I intruded without your consent.”

“You were tryin’ to save our skins, I think that gets you a free pass.” Bucky pulls out Rat-face’s checkmark knife, idly sliding it between his fingers. “Earlier, I only meant—” With a flick of his wrist, it _thuds_ into the dirt. “It’s like a bad penny. You’d think that hell would be here; who woulda thought it’d be in Kreischberg, Austria?” He unlodges the blade. “Earlier, I only wished you hadn’t seen it because I ain’t so fond of the person I became in there. But it wasn’t so bad, seein’ you. Seein’ you there, it wasn’t so bad. Gave me—”

Steve waits. “What?”

Bucky scrubs his wrist across his chin and hides the knife back in his boot. “Nah.”

“Bucky.”

“I ain’t turnin’ into a cornball just ‘cause you took me out for a nice dinner in the middle of a monster-infested jungle, Rogers.”

Steve feels a smile threatening. “Are you calling this a date?”

“A date?” Bucky scoffs. “Future must be a sad place if you think you can take a fella on a date without goin’ _dancing_ —”

“Too bad for you, I can’t dance.”

“Everyone can dance, Rogers. Just a matter of findin’ the right partner.”

Steve, knee-deep in a very vivid memory of an incident that occurred during his senior prom that involved literally breaking his leg, doesn’t notice Bucky until he’s standing next to him, hand outstretched.

“Oh, no.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’ve seen you take on the Super-Skrull with a dinner plate, please tell me you ain’t afraid of a little dancing.”

It takes Steve a moment to place the music drifting towards them from the Grable, the honey-melody tinkling from a piano. Sam Cooke. His mom used to love this song.

Steve takes a deep breath and then Bucky’s hand.

Bucky tugs him close.

“ _If you ever—change your mind—about leavin’, leavin’ me behind—baby, bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin’, bring it on home to me._ ”

There’s the dry heat from the fire and the curling heat from where they’re pressed together, thighs and hips and fingers; Bucky’s metal hand is a gentle whisper on Steve’s hip, one he can barely feel through the rough fabric of his uniform, and his flesh hand grips one of Steve’s loosely.

“This ain’t a fight,” Bucky says, shaking his arm. Steve exhales. He tries to loosen up, catching his tongue between his teeth and staring determinedly at his boots as he catalogs all the parts of his body and all the parts of Bucky’s body. He drops his free hand onto Bucky’s shoulder, pressing his fingers into the soft leather, grip tightening involuntarily as Bucky whispers, “Follow my lead.”

_That’s my bad ear_ , Steve thinks, wanting to laugh at the way the sound travels, clear and bright, straight to his toes. “We’ll see.”

_“I know I laughed, when you left—but now I know, I only hurt myself—”_

Bucky leans back with a grin, the space between them charged. He begins to sway: left, right, left, right. Steve lets himself be caught in the tide of it and swung out to open ocean. Left, right, left, right.

“ _Baby, bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin’, bring it on home to me_. _Yeah (yeah)—”_

“And you said you couldn’t dance,” Bucky huffs, mouth quirked. Steve can’t quite fathom the look on his face—impossibly soft and impossibly fond and, impossibly, directed towards him. Steve could drown. It’d be easy.

“ _Yeah (yeah)_ —”

“This isn’t dancing,” he points out, because he’s a little (big) shit. “It’s swaying.”

“If this bucket of bolts had any good music on it, I could teach you to Lindy.”

“I’d probably wreck the ship.”

“Probably.”

“ _Yeah (yeah)—I’ll give you jewelry, and money, too—that ain’t all, that ain’t all I’d do for you—baby, if you bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin’, bring it on home to me.”_

“My mom used to love this song.”

Left, right, left, right. Bucky’s expression is gentle. “Your ma had good tastes.”

Steve grins. “Not always. She probably would’ve liked you.”

“You’re an asshole,” Bucky tells him, but he’s smiling, and it’s contagious; Steve’s face aches with it.  

“You know, you’re not the first person to tell me that.”

“ _Quelle surprise._ ”

“Ha.”

“Hey, Steve.”

“Hey, Bucky.”

“Can I kiss you?” he asks seriously, forehead furrowed. Sometime between now and then they’d stopped swaying. Steve licks his lips on reflex. The movement draws Bucky’s eyes.

“Yeah, go for it. I mean, if you want. If that’s something you—if you want to fondue. With me.”

“I want to fondue with you,” Bucky agrees.  

“Oh, thank God,” Steve exhales, and then Bucky’s moving closer, and Steve, who hasn’t properly kissed anyone since Sharon (Sam on New Year’s doesn’t count), feels his breath catch in his throat like he’s having an asthma attack—

An asthma attack.

An _asthma_ attack—

“Shit, wait!” he heaves, reeling back and catching Bucky on the chin. They grapple for a second, off-balance, and then they both hit the dirt.

“ _You know I’ll always, be your slave—‘til I’m buried, buried in my grave—”_

“I’m waitin’, I’m waitin’,” Bucky groans. “Wait, why am I waitin’?”

Steve, straddling his hips, stares. “Because this isn’t what I look like.”

“Ok,” Bucky hedges slowly.

“I mean.” Steve shuts his eyes. Opens them and tries again. “Marvel merged with a virtual game in my world before it got me. This body, it’s an avatar, I don’t—I don’t look like this in real life. I don’t look anything like this in real life, and I didn’t want to mislead you, it’s—I have scoliosis.”

“Well, gee, Steve, scoliosis, that’s definitely a deal breaker—”

“I’m being serious, Bucky!”

Bucky shuts up, head cocked. “Hey, if it’s really botherin’ you—if you feel like you’re lyin’—then we’ll stop.”

Steve groans, dropping his head onto Bucky’s chest. “I don’t want to stop.”

“Then don’t stop.”

“But—”

“Steve.” Bucky raises his eyebrows. “We are in the middle of a jungle, trapped inside a board game, looking for a bunch of rocks. You’re definitely overthinkin’ this.”

“ _Oh, honey, bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin’, bring it on home to—”_

Steve kisses him.

Their noses bump, and the angle’s not right, but then Steve tilts his head and suddenly it is; it is. It’s the scratch of Bucky’s beard and the ruthless abandon of his mouth, the drag of his teeth against Steve’s bottom lip; it’s his hands, reaching up to cradle Steve’s face, to bring him closer, closer—

Steve comes up for air. “But you won’t know me. If we get out, you won’t—”

“I’d know you.” Bucky pulls back. “Steve.”

_Clap._

_Clap._

_Clap._

Steve meets Bucky’s frown. They turn.

“Quite a show, boys,” Natasha smirks, sitting where Steve had been minutes before, helping herself to the rest of his K-ration. “But I’d gussy up. Company’s coming.”

“Company?” Steve asks dumbly, right around the time Shuri runs full-tilt into the clearing, followed closely by a giant, hairless sea monkey with at least three-hundred teeth.

“Hey,” Bucky says, voice mild, “remember how I told you we didn’t need to worry about the Abilisk?”

 

 


	16. fourteen/

“Shuri!”

Shuri raises her hands, typing an invisible message that summons a cocoon of blue light just as the Abilisk bites down. Drool slides along the edge of the projection. Steve surges to his feet, summoning his shield mid-charge. The Abilisk, frustrated, gnashes its teeth towards the sky, belching a colorful cloud of rainbow-fire that Steve would definitely appreciate under any other circumstance.

Shuri’s cocoon flickers once and fizzes out, just about the time the Abilisk swings around for a second attack. Steve, shield raised, slides between them.

“Shuri!”

“No, you must get out of the way!” Her eyes are distant, roving over something Steve can’t see as her fingers part invisible threads in the air. Her orange raincoat flutters. “This being feasts on pure energy, I’m what it wants—”

“Shuri, it’s me, it’s Steve—”

She breaks off. “ _Steve_?!”

“I—”

The Abilisk clamps down on his shield. Its breath is volcanic, ash-like as it burps colorful vapors and flings him skyward. Steve makes it above the canopy before gravity takes over, dragging him back towards the rows of jagged teeth—

Someone grabs him around the middle.

“Man, you a lot heavier than you look!”

“I had a big breakfast.”

Beat. “Steven, is that you.”

Steve looks up. The someone is wearing a skin-tight red suit complete with white domino mask; the someone’s hard-light wings are spread wide in an effort to stop their descent. The someone is—

“Sam?”

“One word about the outfit,” Sam says, “and I’ll drop you.”

“I showed up wearing the American flag, if it makes you feel any better.”

“You do realize how ridiculous this whole situation is, right?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Good. I know how you get.” Sam swerves with a curse, avoiding another technicolor blast. His face is like one of those faces that’s been mirrored: Sam’s familiar lines hidden beneath the unfamiliar, a square jaw and a broken nose. The gap between his front teeth is gone. “Only you would manage to get eaten by a _video game_ —”

“It was definitely a New Year’s Resolution.”

“There you go being a little—scratch that, a _big_ shit—”

Steve’s feet swing. “Sam—”

“I know you aren’t about to open your mouth and say we shouldn’t’ve come in after you like we aren’t two grown-ass men completely capable of making our own decisions.”

“Two?”

Below, a black blur emerges from the shadows, bounding gracefully up the creature’s tacky skin to slash at the top of its head.

“T’Challa’s King of Wakanda.” Sam ducks a searching tentacle. “It’s cool, I’ll give him that. It’s cool. Not as cool as someone who can talk to birds—”

Steve fights a wave of panic, not because of Sam’s ( _Falcon_ , his memory supplies, _Ornithologist – Pilot_ ) newfound and very specific brand of telepathy but because he’s here, with Steve, and that makes something unclench in Steve’s chest, which makes him feel incredibly _guilty_ —like he’d made this happen by wishing hard enough. Like he condemned Sam to this life just because he missed him—

“I didn’t want you to come in after me!”

“Tough shit.” Sam swoops, bringing them closer to the Abilisk’s massive jaws. “Now are you gonna help me kill this giant space worm or what?”

 

Bucky ends up killing the giant space worm.

He cheats by using the Grable’s laser turrets. It’s good timing, though; Steve had been about to copy Hercules by taking a swim down the thing’s gullet. It’s still twitching when Shuri tackles him. Or tries to tackle him. Steve barely moves, despite her five-feet-something of familiar exuberance. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the top of her head.

She leans back shrewdly.

“What?” he asks.

“Ay,” she heaves dramatically. “It’s just that you’re so much _taller_. I don’t like it.”

“It’s been a bit of an adjustment period.”

“Still.” She pokes his forehead and then grabs his arm, holding it horizontal for examination. “It’s fascinating. Somehow the game integrated with your existing physiology, enhancing certain inherent traits while making new cells where there were none before—”

“Shuri,” T’Challa warns. The fire’s nothing but embers. In the light spilling from the Grable, he’s barely visible in his black body suit. “Let him breathe.”

“I am!” Shuri exclaims, but steps back, fist to chin. Behind her, Sam lands smoothly, wings folding to his spine as he hits the ground.

“Shuri.” Steve wipes the rest of the Abilisk drool of his shield before disappearing it into his inventory. “How are you—you?”

“Oh, there is a very simple explanation for that—I coded my way into the game’s interface and superimposed my own consciousness over an existing character’s.” She waves a hand in front of her face. “I’m wearing a VR headset.”

“Right,” Steve agrees.

“It is actually quite useful, because not only can I keep an eye on the physical hosts in the real world, but I can access the new areas of Marvel’s code from _inside_ , effectively re-writing reality as I—oh, _wow_.” Shuri’s eyes widen, fixating on something over Steve’s shoulder. “Your arm is _incredible_. May I look at it?”

“It’s about the only incredible thing about him,” Natasha smirks, winking at Steve as she walks down the gangplank.

“It ain’t that exciting.” Bucky’s next, treading quietly down the ramp. “But if you want, I mean—”

Shuri grabs his metal elbow enthusiastically. “The overall design is beautiful, if the execution a bit rudimentary—oh, and it’s so _heavy_. Has there been any accounting for the weight distribution on your spine? If I could condense some of the mechanisms—still, the plate-work is ingenious. This is miles beyond any prosthetic currently available on the market. With a few adjustments, we could be giving _millions_ of people a new lease on—oh.” She smiles brightly. “I’m Shuri, by the way.”

“Bucky,” Bucky manages.

“Nice to meet you, Bucky.”

“Please don’t tell Stark someone approved of his work, he’s already unbearable,” Natasha calls over her shoulder, standing at the edge of the Grable’s light and peering into the dense underbrush. “How’d the trip go?”

Steve, in the middle of helping Sam change his uniform into something a little less flashy, shakes his head. “He’s got the Mind Stone but isn’t willing to leave Nueva York.” He points to **EXO-7**. Sam raises an eyebrow but hits **EQUIP.**

“Tony’s a lot of things, but he’s not a coward. Give him time.”

“Wait, wait, just—hold on.” Sam’s outfit blinks into something darker, with a hell of a lot more body armor. Instead of a domino mask, he’s wearing red-tinted goggles. Steve flashes a thumbs up and is dutifully ignored. “Tony? Stark? As in Tony Stark? He’s _alive_? Man,” Sam turns to T’Challa, “we got to tell Virginia.”

“That requires us escaping, first.” T’Challa pulls off his panther mask, revealing a face that’s too wide, too smooth, a jawline that’s too prominent. Steve’s struck with the same sense of wrongness, watching his friend’s mannerisms and listening to his cadence come from a person he barely recognizes. “A very affable government agent by the name of Coulson informed us that the only way to leave the game is to collect the Stones and call out its name.”

“He was very nice,” Shuri agrees absentmindedly, fiddling with the holographic scan of Bucky’s arm that she’d materialized. Steve watches Bucky poke at it with a candid sort of fascination.

“Sure, when he wasn’t clipping through the floor like a _Skyrim_ NPC.” Sam purses his lips. “I don’t trust him.”

“He is coded with one purpose, Sam, and that’s to help get new players through the tutorial,” Shuri explains patiently, throwing her hands wide so that the blueprint explodes into disparate parts. Bucky’s eyes light up. He flicks a holographic screw. “He is trustworthy by his very nature.”

“Steve’s trustworthy by his very nature; T’Challa’s trustworthy by his very nature. This guy? This guy’s completely—”

“I believe my sister is right,” T’Challa sighs. “Our best bet is to follow Agent Coulson’s instructions.”

“Brother!”

“Ay, what?”

Shuri turns, pinching apart a rectangle in the air. A video screen appears between the frame of her fingers. “Would you please repeat that, but slowly? Especially the part about me being right. I need to record it for scientific purposes.”

“Shuri.”

Bucky raises the projected, virtual plates of his arm, peering at the innards underneath. He catches Steve staring and grins.

“Did you guys get a map?” Steve asks, dragging his attention back to the problem at hand.

“Yeah,” Sam grimaces. “Had to steal it off some guy named Ego.”

Natasha turns her back on the jungle. “That makes things a whole lot less complicated.”

“How so?” T’Challa asks.

“Word’s spread about the map. Everyone in Marvel is looking for the Terrans who have it, which means we can’t afford to drag our feet. Steve?”

“Natasha’s right.” Steve hooks his thumbs into his utility belt. “It’s dangerous to stay in Marvel for too long, for reasons besides the obvious. We have two maps, and five Stones—we’ll split up. Two teams of three.”

Shuri produces a familiar-looking piece of folded paper from one of the pockets of her orange raincoat. She hands it to Sam before turning her attention back to the holographic skeleton of Bucky’s arm.

“Ok.” Sam bends down, unfolding it across the bumpy ground. “But which ones do we hit first?”

Natasha drifts forward, considering the map for a long moment. “Ronan picked up your tail outside of Nueva York. He’ll follow you here.”

“There’s a purple dot about 10 klicks east of us. That him?”

“With the Power Stone, yeah.”

“This Ronan guy.” Sam glances up, eyebrow raised. “He won’t be expecting us.”

Steve feels a bubble of sticky panic pop near the back of his throat. “Sam—”

“Sam’s right.” Natasha looks at Steve. “It makes the most sense. Korath’s long since delivered a report from my bar—he knows what you two look like.”

Steve clenches his teeth. “T’Challa?”

“I understand the reasoning, even if dividing our power seems counterintuitive.” T’Challa slips his mask back on. “Besides, I am well-suited for night hunts.”

“What about you guys?” Sam asks Natasha, probably because he’s currently trying to avoid Steve, which Steve _does not appreciate_ —

“There an orange marker anywhere on that map?”

“Yeah. Here.”

Up in the corner. VORMIR.

Natasha says, “That’s where I would go.”

 

“Be careful.”

“Hey, I’ll be fine. You’re taking all the stupid with you.”

The Grable kicks up a breeze, engines roaring dully. The ramp’s extended behind him but Steve ignores it.

“Thanks, Sam,” he says instead. “For coming in after me.”

“Doing the other thing was never an option.” Sam catches Steve’s look and snorts. “C’mere, you giant idiot.”

Steve meets him in a one-armed hug, holding tight. The world should be right again but it’s not, not really—Sam’s shorter than him.

“See you in Wakanda.”

“See you in Wakanda,” Steve agrees, and steps onto the Grable’s ramp.

 

“Nat, c’mon, no, no—aw, shit.”

“James, where’s your head?” Natasha asks, as her Skrull devours Bucky’s toothy man-bat. She leans back in her chair, pinning Steve with a cat-who-got-the-canary grin. “Oh, I found it.”

“Very funny,” Steve deadpans, dropping down from the cockpit. He pulls up a third chair around the holo-table, turning it around. For all his posturing that the music sucked on this bucket of bolts, Bucky had been quick to turn it back on.

“ _Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain, with the rain in Shambala—”_

“All’s well?” Bucky asks, tapping a flickering creature and dragging it to a new space on the game board. It’s a lion, about to square up against Natasha’s miniaturized Abilisk.

“Ship’s on course.” Steve crosses his arms over the chairback. “What’re you playing?”

“Dejarik.” Bucky catches Steve’s frown and grins. “S’like chess.”

“Fun.”

Natasha shrugs. “James won’t play poker with me anymore.”

Bucky gives a small shake of his head, sending his lion off to meet a gruesome end. Natasha deftly corners his last remaining piece, a flat-faced, four-legged beast with a spikey mane. When the carnage is over, the holo-table fizzes out and she waves her fingers.

“Pay up.”

Bucky tries to pull her into a headlock instead, but Natasha gets the drop on him easily—she twists his right arm behind his back. She’s laughing. Bucky’s laughing, too; he makes no move to escape.

“James, you’re incorrigible.”

“Thanks, doll.”

Natasha shakes her head, smile fading to something small and fond. She drops her grip, reaching up instead to put a hand to the side of Bucky’s face.

He frowns. “Nat?”

She blinks, drawing back. “I’m glad I didn’t break anything important.”

“Just my pride, but it’s taken hits before.” Bucky grabs her wrist. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, James.” Her mouth tips delicately. “This place is filthy.”

“It’s got character,” Steve corrects. Natasha rolls her eyes. He continues, “So why Vormir?”

“You’ll see.” She bends down to kiss Bucky’s cheek. “I’ll be in the cockpit.”

Bucky’s really frowning now, holding metal fingers to the spot her lips touched and watching her disappear up the ladder before whirling towards Steve.

“You see that? That’s—something’s up.”

Steve turns his chair around and rolls it closer. “You look really confused.”

“I am really confused!”

“Well, son, you’re growing up. And your body’s going through changes—”

Bucky kicks his chair, sending it skittering towards the wall. Steve snorts as he crashes, hard, bouncing the other direction. “Hey,” he says, when he’s finally drifted to a stop at the other end of the holo-table, “thanks for being so patient with Shuri. I know she can be a handful, but she means well.”

“It wasn’t anything, not really. She—” Bucky finally drops his hand. “She reminded me of my sisters.”

Steve crosses his arms on the table. “Tell me about them?”

Bucky glances at him; then he looks down, expression wistful and affectionate. Steve wishes he had his sketchbook.

“Well, I had three. Their names were Ruth, Alice, and Becca…”

 

 


	17. fifteen/

Steve lands the Grable on a sandy plateau, a floating island among stretches of shallow water. Undisturbed, the pools reflect the deep purple color of the sky, stretching in endless twilight towards the orange dawn sitting on the distant horizon.

Outside, a perpetual wind slowly erodes the landscape, kicking up grains of fine, dark sand. Steve feels the tense undercurrent settle in his gut, unnamed anxiety growing in the face of so much emptiness as he secures the ship. To his left, Bucky double-checks his weapons: the stolen knife in his boot, the other one on his thigh, the Quad Blaster that had been part of Stark’s care package holstered low on his hip. He nods once when he’s done and follows Steve down the gentle slope of the hill.

Natasha stands on the crest of the next dune, a lonely figure surveying the barren landscape. Her hair dances like blood in the dusk, whipping across her face as she turns to watch their ascent.

“What now?” Bucky asks. Natasha points to the lone, craggy peak dominating the distant horizon.

“Now, we climb.”

 

They walk in silence, by unspoken decision or some unnamed apprehension. They travel along the tops of the ridges. Steve’s boots sink deep into the sand. He watches the way the grains slip away as he bends his knee, watches the ripples his movement sends all the way to the reflecting pools waiting down below—a wave, like a snake slithering by just beneath the surface.

The wind howls a lonely symphony over the desolation.

 

The figure is waiting for them near the peak.

“Welcome, Steven Rogers, born 1994. Welcome, Natalia Romanova, born 1959. Welcome, James Barnes, born 1917.”

Loose rocks settle along the path as Steve stops. Bucky is more deliberate: he draws his Quad Blaster, aiming calmly for the cross-legged man seated near the exit of the long, winding path up the mountain. Storm clouds threaten in the distance.

“You would shoot a man in the back?” The figure tuts. “Sergeant Barnes, I do believe I underestimated your penchant for death.”

“Turn around,” Bucky orders.

“As you wish.” The figure rises lithely, gracefully, twisting to reveal a volatile man wearing a Cheshire grin, swaying like a cattail with outstretched hands. His is not a face that invites trust; Steve is reminded of an eel. Slippery. He casually pulls out his shield. Only Natasha seems unaffected, or at the very least unamused. “Like what you see?”

“How do you know us?” Steve asks.

“Oh, I know all who journey here. Fortunately,” the man inclines his head, still leering, “that number has been few.”

“Hello Loki, son of Laufey. Disgraced Prince of Asgard.” Natasha’s mouth quirks as the smile drops from the man’s face. She continues, politely, “You’re not the only one who knows things.”

Loki’s head ticks. When his smirk returns, it’s laced with poison. “You must know that trying to wipe out all the red in your ledger is pointless. Drakov’s daughter. Sao Paulo. The hospital fire. Your ledger is dripping. And the company you keep—a monster and a toy soldier.” Loki raises his hands. “But who am I to judge?”

Bucky releases the safety on his blaster. “Nat.”

“It’s alright, James.” The curve of Natasha’s lips could be the serrated edge of a knife. “He can’t hurt us.”

“Alas, but the Widow is right—I am but a humble servant. I could do no more harm to you than an ant could to a boot. I am the Keeper and the Watcher and the Cursed. I can lead you to what you seek. So tell me, humans,” Loki raises an eyebrow, “what is it you seek?”

Natasha says, without hesitation, “We seek the Soul Stone.”

Loki bows low, gesturing to the rocky outcropping behind him.

“Then by all means, weary travelers—follow me.”

 

The path cuts between two giant monoliths reaching like hands in prayer towards the sky. Their carved bases frame the distant horizon and the struggling dawn. Loki leads them under their giant shadows to a ledge overlooking the rest of bleak Vormir. The wind whispers, cool and dry. Steve can’t help but notice the long way down. Natasha ventures to the edge, peering over the side.

“What’s this?” Bucky asks, gesturing with his gun.

“Your prize,” Loki answers, “should any of you be willing to reach it.”

Steve frowns. “There’s nothing here.”

“Isn’t there?” Loki inclines his head. “I believe the Widow knows.”

Bucky takes a step forward. “Nat?”

Natasha kicks a loose rock. Steve can hear it bouncing for several seconds until its descent is swallowed by the howling wind.

“I’ve been pulling on some threads,” she says, her back still to them. “Calling in some favors.”

“Nat, get away from the edge.”

“The Soul is a fickle thing,” Loki sighs, leaning against one of the monoliths, examining his nails. “As bad as a lover or a child. It takes without hesitation. It demands without explanation. And all,” something twists in his expression, something almost morose, “in the name of wisdom.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Steve snaps, suddenly afraid—a nameless, gaping fear, threatening to swallow him whole. The wind sings up the cliff face; Vormir’s perpetual twilight is an anticipatory gloom.

“He means that the Soul Stone has a certain sentience. To ensure that whoever wields it understands its power, it demands a sacrifice.” Natasha’s hand moves to her waist. “In order to take the Stone, you must lose that which you love.”

“Natasha,” Bucky snaps, reaching—

 _Click_.

She points the barrel of her gun right between his eyes. It’s a scuffed number, small and worn; horribly human in its construction. Steve wonders if she’d brought it with her, all those years ago.

“James,” she says evenly. “This is my choice.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky breathes. He takes a step forward and Natasha fires. The bullet grazes Bucky’s cheek, a long cut that begins to bleed almost immediately. Steve’s trying to work his way out of this, but Natasha’s too smart and positioned too well for any of the stunts he might try to pull.

For the first time since coming into Marvel, Captain America fails him.

He should’ve seen this coming. Should’ve asked more questions. But he didn’t, and now—

“There’s gotta be another way.” Bucky holsters his blaster and holds out his hands. Natasha shakes her head.

“There is no other way.” Loki’s face is somber. There is acceptance in his posture; for the first time, Steve can pick out the loss that sits across his shoulders. “There is only the question of if you have the conviction to succeed where others have failed.”

Bucky shakes his head. “It isn’t failure.”

“James—”

“I don’t wanna leave if this is what it costs.”

Natasha smiles, then. True and bright and real. She says, “Trust me.”

Bucky’s face collapses. “Always.”

Natasha nods. She looks at Steve. Frozen, useless Steve, all the strength in the world incapable of changing her iron will, or stopping the bullet from her gun, or reaching her before the fall.

“We don’t trade lives,” he tells her.

“Ever the idealist, Rogers. Who says I’m trading anything?” Her hair waves around her face like an open wound. “See you around, boys.”

She steps off.

Bucky jumps forward and Steve tackles him from behind. They skid across the dirt, sliding to a stop inches from the edge, kicking loose rocks over the side. Steve waits for a noise, any noise, but there is nothing, just the awful wind shooting up from the gully below.

“Let me go, Steve, _let me go_ —”

Steve grapples tighter, afraid, afraid, afraid, Natasha’s peaceful face as she tipped back burned into his eyelids. Overhead, the sky opens up, a maw that draws light from the monoliths, tendrils of it unaffected by the howling wind. It grows, brighter and brighter, until it drowns the ledge, and the monuments, and Loki, and Bucky—

Steve shuts his eyes and holds on.

 

He wakes up in the water.

It’s lukewarm; it feels like nothing. Like air. He can pick out the familiar shape of the Grable on the dune above, a dark outline against a slowly brightening sky. Steve turns towards the mountain.

The sun is beginning to rise.

Bucky’s a few feet away. His shoulders are curled, his face hidden behind the curtain of his hair. The water licks gently at his knees. He feels Steve’s eyes and looks up, expression flat. He opens his hands.

There, glowing like the sunrise between his cupped palms, is the Soul Stone.

 

 


	18. sixteen/

Steve steers the Grable through Vormir’s turbulent atmosphere.

The climb out proves more difficult than the descent. The ship, buffeted by angry gusts, groans in protest, and it’s not hard to imagine the whole thing falling apart like the gag in some bad 70s cartoon. His teeth rattle, but his hands on the controls are steady.

Between one breath and the next, Vormir disappears. The ship settles gratefully, happy to be back in the relatively unhindered vacuum of space. Steve pilots out of the last of the orange-purple nebulae, flies until there’s nothing but the firefly beauty of a million stars, and then kills the engines.

He allows himself thirty seconds of quiet nothing before he gets up, venturing down the ladder into the hold. There’s no music to soften the clanging impact of his boots, and without the reassuring hum of the engines the vastness of space is overwhelming.

Bucky’s not at the holo-table and he’s not on the bunks—he’s behind them, cross-legged in front of the small, hexagonal window at the back of the ship. Steve telegraphs his approach.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Can I…?”

Bucky wipes at his face surreptitiously. Steve settles next to him, leaving a deliberate two feet between their knees. Something glints in Bucky’s left hand—the Soul Stone, rolling between his thumb and index finger.

Steve watches the universe unfolding behind them and wonders how long it would’ve taken them to reach the edge. Vormir had been in the very corner of the map. Did that mean that past it, past the mountain and towards the sunrise—

“What a hypocrite,” Bucky finally says. His voice cracks.

“She knew none of us would agree to it.”

“I shoulda known.” Bucky turns, enough for Steve to be able to make out his profile. “I _did_ know. But I trusted her. So I didn’t think to ask.”

“I didn’t either.” Steve watches him, eyes roving across the planes of his face. Dried blood, the kiss from Natasha’s bullet, is still crusted around his chin. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“You were there.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you know that’s not true.”

Steve licks his lips. “Did you believe in Natasha?”

Bucky finally meets his eyes. His own are red-rimmed, his expression purposefully stony and still—an attempt to keep his head above water.

“Did you respect her?”

Bucky frowns down at the miniature sun pinched between his fingers.

“Then you can’t blame yourself. Allow Natasha the dignity of her choice. She must’ve damn well thought you were worth it.”

“Worth it,” Bucky scoffs, scrubbing his face.

He hides the Stone in his fist.

 

“ _I come up hard baby, but now I’m cool—I didn’t make it sugar, playin’ by the rules—”_

Steve sucks in a breath, blinking groggily awake. He’s momentarily disoriented by the view, stars stretching in waves outside the ship, but then the world crashes back in: Vormir, Natasha, the Grable. Bucky, quietly asleep, his body curved to the frame of the window. Steve’s head is pillowed on his thigh, which, all things considered, isn’t very comfortable—still, he doesn’t want to get up. Bucky’s flesh hand twitches near Steve’s shoulder.

_“I come up hard baby, but now I’m fine—I’m checkin’ trouble sugar, movin’ down the line—”_

Steve frowns at the tape deck, but the ship’s in low power mode, and the music’s too quiet. He sits up, trying to convince himself it’s the right thing to do.

“Steve?” Bucky cracks one eye open.

“I’ll check it out,” he exhales, trying to hide a yawn as he stumbles towards the ladder.

It’s louder in the cockpit, Marvin Gaye crooning from the readout next to the pilot’s chair.

 

**[INCOMING TRANSMISSION…ACCEPT? Y/N]**

Steve settles in, starting the engines idling before extending the screen near his elbow. When he hits **Y** , he’s greeted almost immediately with a video feed coming live from Sam’s nostril. 

“Shuri, hey, it worked—”

“That _is_ good news, otherwise who knows where our call would’ve ended up—how is the reception, Steve, can you hear us alright?” 

“I can hear you fine,” Steve’s still digging sleep from his eye, “but all I can see is the inside of Sam’s nose.” The picture adjusts, and suddenly he’s greeted with a full head of unimpressed Sam. “But it’s a beautiful nose.”

“Damn right it’s a—shit, Steve. What the hell happened?”

Steve presses his lips together. Behind Sam, Shuri is leaning over some kind of readout. The space they’re in is sleek, white and blue except for the colorful pop art curving up the spiral ramp. Futuristic music pounds _dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba_ through the speakers.

He says, “We lost Natasha.”

“Shit,” Sam breathes. “How?”

“She made a bid for the Soul Stone. I couldn’t stop her. I wasn’t fast enough, I didn’t—I didn’t think.”

“Steve,” Sam warns, shaking his head. “That’s not on you.”

“But it _is_ on me. I keep—treating this like a video game, but it’s not—”

“She didn’t come back? I got dusted trying to grab the Power Stone and I still got two lives left—”

Steve’s glance is sharp and Sam’s mouth is flat.

“Steven.”

Steve shrugs, halfway angry. “We came through a video game. She didn’t. I think that means we’re playing by different rules.”

“Well.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, maybe it’ll reset when we beat it. You know—one of those, ‘if one of us wins, everyone wins’ sorta thing.”

“Maybe.” Steve presses his head against the chairback, thinking of the starlight hiding in the hollow of Bucky’s throat. “But I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

“I hear you.”

Steve listens to the tinny music, trying to re-focus before the silence drags on too long. It probably already has. “So, you got the Power Stone?”

Sam jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Shuri’s looking at it now.”

“Where are you guys?”

“At the rendezvous point. When we didn’t hear from you I had her rig up a signal—”

“That’s Wakanda?”

“Part of it.” Sam glances over his shoulder. “Shuri! Come explain shit to Steve!”

“Ay, yes! Hold your horses—”

“I have horses?”

Shuri bodies Sam out of the way, settling in front of the camera. “You are almost as bad as my brother. Steve—” She switches gears, frowning. “Are you alright?”

Steve tries a smile. He doesn’t think it’s very convincing. “I’m fine, Shuri. Sam said you got the Power Stone?”

Her forehead furrows. “Yes.” She shakes herself back to the task at hand. “Yes, we did. It is giving off massive amounts of _power_ ,” she winks, “and requires a specialized container to house it. I’m trying to find a way to suppress its energy output—in the meantime, we’ve located another Stone.”

“Where?”

Shuri taps two fingers on the air near her face and slides. “It’s here, in Wakanda. On the plain of Mount Bashenga. Right,” she holds up one finger, “above my lab.”

 

**[INCOMING FILE…ACCEPT? Y/N]**

 

Steve slides open the picture. The field revealed stretches in a dry, yellow-green sea, broken by the occasional outcropping of rock, innocuous except for the swirling red rift hovering above it like a wound.

“I call it the Convergence,” Shuri explains. “By my calculations, it is the origin point of the contact between Marvel and _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ —hence the fully realized formation of a kingdom _I_ coded. The Reality Stone is at its center. T’Challa is currently gathering NPCs to help defend it.”

“There a threat?” 

Shuri makes a face. “Our War Dogs have reported movement in Knowhere. The Collector seems to believe we _stole_ the Stone, and he has not quiet about his displeasure—”

“—which means now everyone in Marvel knows where it is.” Steve, still frowning at the image, asks, “Can you get it out?”

“I am working on a way to extricate it without threatening the entire fabric of reality, but until I have a stabilizing agent it’s going to take time—”

“What do you need?”

Steve starts. Bucky’s standing in the shadows of the cockpit. Steve hadn’t even heard him come up the ladder.

“Buck—”

“Shuri,” Bucky repeats, not meeting Steve’s eyes, “what do you need?” 

 

 


	19. seventeen/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's all google translate

“Look. There.”

Steve takes the binoculars, zeroing in on the thin, bumpy road below their position. The transport coming towards them is ten miles away and in no hurry. He flattens himself into the cover of undergrowth.

“Wakanda’s that way. How much you wanna bet they just came from a recon mission?”

Bucky’s—settled, somehow. Like this is familiar work. Maybe it is. Steve wishes he’d thought to ask. He hands the binoculars back instead. “Too big. They were probably picking something up.”

“Chitauri tech, maybe. Most of the squids disappeared in ’44, not includin’ its big brain. Zola was the innovator. They’re back in the Dark Ages without him.” Bucky wipes a hand down his face. “Jesus.”

Steve watches him, unsure of what to say. There are too many things crowding the back of his throat. He settles on the task at hand, tugging the map out of Bucky’s pocket and folding it into a square around their current objective.

The Hydra Empire is a fortress, an island in a sea of trees, and there, buried at its heart, glows the white-blue light of the Space Stone. Steve wishes Shuri needed anything else to stabilize the Convergence; he wishes Sam were here. Bucky looks like he’s about to shatter into a million pieces, and Steve doesn’t think he can catch them all.

“What do you know about this place?” he asks, disappearing the map into his inventory.

“I know it ain’t an empire, that’s for sure.” Bucky’s eyes return to the trundling transport. “They call it Castle Zemo. It’s some Bavarian house o’ horrors—probably Schmidt used the Space Stone to try to get home, ‘cept he didn’t have enough power to pull himself through and ended up draggin’ most of the _château_ back instead. One road in, one road out. Heavily fortified—at least four anti-aircraft guns, though we shouldn’t have to worry about those.”

“How many troops?”

“Anywhere from five to seven hundred. SSR could never get a count.”

“And Schmidt?”

“What about him?”

“I know he was there, Buck,” Steve says softly, thinking of the _drip-drip-drip_ of pipes, of Bucky’s glassy, faraway gaze. The sweat clinging to his temples. That wraith-like gaze cutting through the dark. “I just want to know what we’re dealing with.”

Bucky digs his fingers into the loamy soil. “He’s their leader. Disappeared along with everyone else. Rumor was he’d experimented on himself tryin’ to become some sorta superior man.”

“Was rumor true?”

“I didn’t lose my arm to no housefly, Cap.” Bucky mouth twists, self-deprecating. “Didn’t lose it to no regular soldier, either.”

Steve watches the truck inch closer. “You know, after my mom died, I ran myself ragged trying to stay busy. Extra shifts at work, volunteering, long walks, freelance stuff—anything so I didn’t have to go back to that empty apartment.”

“You got a point?”

“Nobody would blame you for taking a breath.”

“You know, s’funny. I used to have all the goddamn time in the world—then you showed up.” Bucky grins crookedly. “Now all of a sudden my time seems a lot more precious.”

Steve, abruptly overwhelmed, leans forward to kiss him. It’s a soft thing. Gentle. His eyebrows furrow. When Bucky pulls back, face quiet, he presses his metal thumb against them.

“Ma always told us our faces would freeze like that, and wouldn’t it be a shame?”

“You’re not alone, Buck.” Steve swallows, licking his lips. “You know that, right?”

“I’m starting to.”

In an effort to distract himself from Bucky’s mouth, Steve turns his attention to his gear. It’s a fast count: his dinner-plate shield. Bucky’s got everything else, including the borrowed Sakaaran jump-boots around his ankles. Steve refocuses on the transport, less than two miles away. He can make out the skull-squid logo painted across one door. He says, “If we can stop it, we can hitch a ride. How good’s your German?”

“Used to fool all the Krauts at checkpoints.”

“Knew I kept you around for something.”

“No, see, this is the part where you ask me how good of a shot I am.”

“Huh?”

Bucky, wearing enough weapons to arm a private militia (including, but not limited to, two knives, two Quad Blasters, and several grenades), slings the weathered sniper rifle off his back. His grin his ruthless. He drags Steve in by the collar and whispers, hot in his ear, “Ask me how good of a shot I am, Rogers.”

“How good of a shot are you, Barnes?”

Bucky lets go, leaning back.

“The best,” he declares, and lines it up.

Down on the road, the truck’s front tired explodes.

 

Its canvas flutters as it putters to a stop, wheel popping painfully over the dirt. The engine cuts; Steve listens to it click. A black-helmeted man, only his mouth and nose visible, pokes his head out the back flap.

“ _Was ist passiert?_ ”

“ _Wir müssen etwas getroffen haben._ Horst _, geh nachsehen._ ”

The passenger door opens and the one called Horst, clad in the same, heavy-duty uniform, travels cautiously around the hood to examine Bucky’s handiwork. He bends down, frowning at the bullet hole.

Steve counts _one, two—_

“ _Scharfschütze!”_ Horst shouts. “ _Runter, runter!_ ”

He makes a mad dash for cover just as Bucky lets off another shot, a deliberate misfire that shatters the side mirror. The next one skids off the front windshield; Bucky makes a show of withdrawing the rifle.

_“Da sehe ich ihn!_ ”

“Klaus, _geh mit ihm um_.”

“ _Mich?!_ ”

“ _Es gibt nur einen, sei kein Feigling!_ ”

After several beats of silence Klaus rolls out of the back of the truck and straight towards the tree line.

“Geez, what an idiot,” Bucky mutters, as he and Steve carefully crawl back until the lip of the ridge they’d been perched on blocks their view of the road. Steve can hear Klaus puffing after them, heedless of the noise.

“Come out!” the soldier shouts in sharp, accented English. “Come out, you are surrounded! _Komm raus, du bist umgeben_!”

“Buck, is that—”

“German, yeah.” Bucky’s metal arm recalibrates and Steve holds out his hand as Klaus crests the rise several feet to their left, glancing cautiously around.

“ _Hallo?_ ”

Bucky stands up. His smile is poisonous. “Hiya, Fritz.”

“ _Scheiße_ ,” Klaus exhales, scrabbling for the pistol at his hip. Steve, all alone, sweeps a foot through his ankles. Bucky’s on him before he can shout for help, pinching his nostrils with one hand and covering his mouth with the other. Klaus kicks up a struggle, still trying to reach his gun, but Bucky holds on until he passes out.

“Klaus! Klaus, _geht es dir gut?”_

Bucky eases off and clears his throat. “ _Es geht mir gut!”_ he calls perfect German, pitching his voice a few notes higher. “ _Ich habe den Angreifer unter Kontrolle._ ”

Steve reaches around to pull off Klaus’ helmet. The kid underneath hasn’t even lost all his baby fat. His blonde hair sticks up at odd angles. The insignia on his shoulder is a ghost from Peggy’s corkboard: the bloody skull-squid of Hydra. It’s the same color Schmidt’s face had been in that damp, dank hallway.

“Small problem. Unless you brought a razor.”

Bucky purses his lips, considering a hand through his scruff. “If we’re bein’ honest, you look more in-line with party aesthetics, anyway.”

“Smaller problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t speak German.”

“What the hell did they teach you in high school, huh?”

“Not German.” Steve begins stealing the rest of Klaus’ uniform and is greeted with a bit of _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ interfacing popping up near the kid’s head.

 

**HYDRA INFANTRY**

**> Uniform (1)**

**> Luger pistol (1)**

**> Bottle caps (42)**

**> Gold coins (13)**

**TAKE ALL (X)               BACK (O)**

Steve pulls the uniform and the Luger into his inventory, leaving Klaus in a pair of Hydra-issued boxers.

“Seriously,” Bucky asks, “where does all that stuff _go_?”

Steve hits **EQUIP** and immediately scowls at the stiff green fabric, the red piping, the rigid boots. He drags Klaus’ helmet into his lap.

“ _Wer ist es?_ ” one of the shoulders shouts. “Klaus!”

Bucky cocks an eyebrow. “ _Ein Amerikaner!”_

Steve shakes his head; even _he_ doesn’t need German to understand that one, but that’s the equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a shrapnel wound. He also doesn’t need Captain America to tell him this is a monumentally stupid plan, he figured that out all by himself—

“You’ll be fine.” Bucky offers up his wrists with a sly smile. “Just use your throat.”

Steve chokes.

 

They’re shoved into the back of the truck next to stamped crates of alien tech. Bucky’s hands, cuffed by some of the stuff, itch towards his thigh, but Steve had already disappeared most of his weapons cache (with the exception of Rat-face’s knife, buried along the edge of one boot). Occasionally he’d shout something like, “ _Beweg dich nicht, amerikanischer Abschaum_ ,” for the sake of appearances.

The air coming through the canvas flap is cool, growing damper as the road climbs. Fog creeps in slowly at first, and then thick and cloying, sticking to tree branches and obscuring their view.

“Stay close,” Bucky’s muttering. “They’ll put me in a holdin’ cell ‘til Schmidt’s ready to bash heads. So long as you’re with my escort, we should be able to ditch ‘em.”

“That doesn’t give us much time to find the Space Stone. They’ll sound the alarm when we don’t show. Fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Count on an extra twenty.” Bucky smiles wolfishly. “Thing about havin’ so many heads is that one rarely knows what the other’s doin’.”

Steve grins, pulling off one wide leather glove so he can worm his fingers under the edge of his helmet.

“What’s that?”

“What?” Steve asks, pausing mid-scratch. Bucky points. Steve looks down at the two blocky tallies carved in black ink across the exposed skin of his wrist and says, lightly, “Birthmark.”

Bucky is quiet. Steve, being chipped away slowly by his shrewd, flinty gaze, tugs his glove back on and turns to watch what little he can see of the landscape, which is almost nothing until they trundle under an honest-to-God portcullis. The truck bounces over uneven ground and pulls to a sharp stop. The engine cuts abruptly. 

“ _Ausgezeichnete Arbeit,_ Privat Müller _. Ich nehme an, die Dinge liefen reibungslos_?”

Bucky freezes, looking suddenly ill. The driver’s side door opens. “ _In den meisten Fällen,_ Führer _._ ”

Bucky nudges Steve’s foot. “Schmidt.”

“What’s he want?” Steve asks, much more calmly than he feels, even if he does wish they’d at least made it inside before their plan went belly-up. Bucky doesn’t answer: Steve watches the way his face folds, a tactical retreat. “Buck,” he repeats, “what’s he want?” 

“He’s—askin’ what happened. And he wants the truck unloaded.”

“ _Wir trafen einen Amerikaner auf der Long Road._ ”

“We ran into an American on the Long Road.”

“ _Ein Amerikaner? Hier? Sie sind wirklich wie Kakerlaken. Komm, zeig es mir._ ”

Bucky scowls, dragging some of himself back to the surface. “He called us cockroaches. Squid bastard.” He swallows, meeting Steve’s eyes. “Guess we better face the music, huh?”

Steve nods, once. “I’m right behind you.”

 

The courtyard’s in a state of disrepair, grass pushing up through the cobblestones and yellow leaves drifting from the trees. Most of the brick-and-plaster façade of the castle is covered in rickety scaffolding.

Johann Schmidt, in comparison, is a spotless man. His boots shine. His uniform is pressed. The clean, black lines of it accentuate his heavy brow, his hollow eyes, his empty nose. His skin has the same consistency as candle wax, dripped onto a mannequin and left to harden. If Steve didn’t know it, he’d be hard-pressed to believe the man was human at all.

Bucky puts up a decent struggle as Steve drags him from the car, Luger pointed at his ribcage. Even accounting for the metal arm, Bucky’s strong—Steve’s almost surprised by it, the way it borders on inhuman. He jerks him to a stop in front of Schmidt.

The Skull smiles, all lips and no teeth. “Sergeant Barnes. I am hardly surprised—it has been too long.”

“Not long enough, asshole,” Bucky growls, pulling at Steve’s hold.

“I always knew you’d find your way back. We are one and the same, you and I.”

Bucky shifts.

“You do not believe me, but then I wonder—why is it, do you think, that of who came in contact with it, the serum only worked on us?”

“Ve caught him trying to steal our latest shipment,” Steve manages, enough to draw Schmidt’s weighted gaze. It cleaves with the calculation of a butcher’s knife.

“A symptom.” The Skull turns back to Bucky. “I hear that you are making a play for the Infinity Stones. If this is your first move, then it is poorly planned—perhaps if the Widow were here, your strategy would be more sound.”

Bucky lurches forward, teeth bared. Steve drives the Luger into his ribs in a warning, heatbeat high in his chest.

“Ah. So she is lost to the game. A pity. She was a rare player.”

“You shut the fuck up,” Bucky spits.

“Take him to the laboratory and have him prepped. I may have lost Zola, but I’ve no doubt that with enough blood samples we will be able to recreate his work.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve snaps, tugging at Bucky’s restraints. “Come along, _Amerikaner_ —”

“Private.”

Steve stops. Turns. Underneath him, Bucky tenses. “Yes, sir?”

“I hope your time amongst the rabble has not made you forget respect.”

“No, sir,” Steve swallows, snapping off a salute. “Sorry, sir.”

Schmidt holds out his hand. It takes Steve a moment to realize he’s asking for Klaus’ Luger.

“Sir?”

“I do not ask for anything twice.”

Steve drops the gun into his waiting palm. Schmidt examines the thin line of its barrel, the wooden grip. He loads a bullet into the chamber. _Click_.

“A superior item. Unparalleled. It is weapons like these that will win the war, private.”

“Vat  war, Führer?”

The Skull gestures magnanimously. “The war we find ourselves currently waging. It is a war of wits instead of nations. A question of survival. Do you know the law of the jungle?”

“No, sir.”

“I can tell,” he answers sympathetically, and then opens fire _onetwothree_.

Steve feels a sharp burst of pain near his kidney, two more clustered near his heart. He stumbles backwards, listening to the heavy beating in his chest, the rush of blood like ocean-water in his ears. He hits his knees.

“You salute like an American,” the Skull explains.

Steve’s eyes are heavy. His heartbeat sings in his ears. Blood stains the forest green wool of his Hydra uniform. He tips back, feeling it at the corners of his mouth. Sharp and metallic. Bucky catches him. Of course Bucky catches him. There’s the curve of his broken cuffs on the floor.

“ _Steve_.”

And then—

 

 


	20. eighteen/

At this time of day, the European Sculpture Court is flooded with sunlight.

The crisp cleanness of it drips molten through the picture windows, paints the petrified garden in shades of white—moments frozen in amber, carved of marble. The quiet murmur of diners enjoying the Petrie Court Café, broken by the occasional _clank_ of silverware on glass, swells like a tide behind him.

Steve adjusts his perch on the portable stool he’d gotten for Christmas, not-so-subtly peering over the shoulder of the old man next to him so he can watch the veiny, dark-skinned hand steadily sketch the profile of Ugolino and his sons.

“You know, ain’t nothin’ gonna appear on that page less you draw it yourself.”

Steve, ashamed at being caught, buries his nose in his sketchbook. The old man tips his fedora back with the curve of his wrist.

“Ugolino, though,” he says, squinting between his art and the sculpture before tuning to Steve with a wink, “he be a tough customer.”

Steve pushes his glasses up. They’re too big. He’d gotten them three years ago under the belief that he’d grow into them, but now he’s fourteen and they’re still slipping down his nose.

“I think—” He frowns. “I don’t think that’s Ugolino.”

The old man sets his notebook down carefully on the shiny, cream-colored floor and cracks arthritic fingers. “You got any idea why the fellow looks that way?”

Steve turns to the marble statue, poignant in its stillness—a lone figure caught mid-stride, a bundle of rope and the strap of a rifle gripped loosely form his right hand and dragging across the plinth. His left sleeve swings loosely, knotted just below the shoulder. The anguish of the solider is nothing like the broad strokes of a decapitated Medusa that Steve can see over his shoulder—it’s the anguish of the weary, of the resigned, mouth flat and eyes half-lidded.

It’s been too long since the old man asked Steve a question. Steve shakes his head.

“He’s been at war practically his whole life.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah. But it makes for great art.” The old man gestures to the sketchpad in Steve’s lap. “Here, what you got down?”

The stool creaks. Steve, hands too big, begins flipping through the pages, everything rendered in messy strokes of charcoal: the curve of a cheek, the cleft of a chin, the corner of an eye crinkled under a smile.

“You focus on the soldier, huh?”

Steve nods. “He deserves to know.”

The old man rocks back, lips pursed, considering. Then he takes his thumb, the skin peeling around his nail, and traces the soldier’s cheek. “You getting there, I think. You know the name of this piece?”

“Bucky,” Steve breathes.

 

Steve lands to the telltale _click_ of guns rising to meet him. He holds up his hands.

The Red Skull tilts his head. The Luger in his hand is gone, as is Steve’s stolen Hydra uniform. Death must’ve reset his inventory; at least he’s back in the **STEALTH** suit. Bucky, crouched down in front of him with his hands buried in the weeds, still hasn’t moved.

“It appears you have been touched by a higher power, Mr…?”

“Captain. Captain America.”

Schmidt laughs. He clasps waxy hands behind his back, hiding knucklebones as prominent as any dead man’s. “It is no great leap to believe that your country would so enslave themselves to the concept of patriotism that they would hide their wars behind a few stars and stripes. Look around you, Captain America—this is the future. There are no flags.”

Steve glances left, right: fifteen men. The two from the truck, ten other light infantry, and three heavies lugging flamethrowers from each arm. Can’t get out the way they came, at least not yet, but Bucky’s still got his innocuous-looking jump boots, and Steve’s betting they can fly low enough to avoid the anti-aircraft guns. The Grable’s docked in a stretch of unassuming woods maybe fifteen miles away.

“You are here for the power of the gods, yes?” The Red Skull extends his hand. “Then let us discuss the power of the gods.”

 

They are marched through the castle grounds, most of it an empty monument, the rest of it a graveyard. Their small group—Schmidt in the lead, Steve and Bucky in the middle, five infantrymen watching their backs—could be the last people on earth. They pass a monster, a strangely designed tank whose armor is completely rusted through and whose gun barrel has long since fallen off. Steve is reminded of a poem he’d had to read in school. _My name is Ozymandias, king of kings_.

Bucky’s eyes never leave Schmidt’s back, except once, to grab Steve’s wrist. He digs between the fabric, rolling back his glove.

“A few,” he hisses, throwing Steve’s words from earlier back at him when he finds one black tally instead of two. “ _Enough_.”

Steve grimaces. “Buck—”

“ _Halt’s Maul!_ ” one of the soldiers bites. Steve hears the rattle of the man’s gun and shuts up; the barrel presses an invisible line between his shoulder blades. He feels the anticipation of it tightening his chest.

 _Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains_.

 

“Can I interest you in a drink?”

Steve deliberately side-eyes the soldiers still clustered nearby, weapons drawn. The Skull smirks.

“Leave,” he orders settling three heavy tumblers on his desk. Steve watches them file out the way they’d come, down the spiral staircase wedged near the giant receiver in the center of the round room.

Schmidt’s office sits at the top of one of Castle Zemo’s towers, warped planks for the floor and reinforced glass for the windows overlooking the surrounding wilds. Pale, foggy light curls along the bank of machines: an old-fashioned radio, several chrome-smooth towers whose thick, snake-like wires curl towards the antenna. Steve can make out a crack in the ceiling where the roof splits.

“This is my last bottle of Vat 69, plundered from an Allied footlocker during my previous life. I suppose I am fortunate that it made the journey with me to this one.”

Steve makes no move to take the proffered glass, half-full of amber whiskey. Bucky does. He gauges the weight and then, neat and immediate, throws it at the nearest wall. It shatters, liquor bleeding down the cream-colored paint.

“It is a wonder you survive the army, Sergeant Barnes, when you are so willfully disobedient.”

“You just sent away your goons, you really think you got the upper hand here?”

“While you no doubt outmatch my men, I am not,” Schmidt examines the worn label of the Vat 69, “my men.”

“What is it you’re after?” Steve asks, shooting a sharp look at Bucky. If they can keep Schmidt talking, if they can find out the location of the Space Stone, they might be able to salvage this—

“Let us begin with what you’re after.” The Skull holds out his hand. A cube materializes on the pads of his fingers, cracking the air around it into shards of glass that reflect and refract the rest of the room through a molten, blue-white haze. Steve feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

Well, that was a lot easier than expected.

“The jewel of Odin’s treasure room.”

He sets it down on his work table, sizzling amid curling paper and blueprints. Steve’s untouched glass gets caught up in its orbit, disappearing abruptly and reappearing ten feet away in several pieces on the ground.

“Have you ever considered the power of a doorway? This can open a pathway to anywhere in the cosmos.”

“Then how’s it you’re still stuck here, muckin’ up the place?” Bucky snaps.  

“If you are asking me why I have not yet attempted to return to my beloved Germany,” the Skull turns his head and spits, “then the answer is simple: the multiverse is too vast. Beyond the borders of Marvel, and without a comparable energy signature to serve as an anchor point, I would be forever lost.”

“I don’t see how that’d be a bad thing.”

“If you are asking me why I have chosen to remain in this decrepit castle with a dwindling army, then my answer is also simple: you do not win chess by immediately sacrificing your queen. You do not win cards by showing your hand. I have been playing the long game, Sergeant; and I have just been shown my _coup de grâce_.”

“Your French is atrocious.”

“And you better make your point fast,” Steve adds flatly, watching blue energy flare from the corners of the cube.

“Fine, I will be brief. I know you have a map to the Infinity Stones. Moreover, I would hazard a guess that several are already in your possession.”

Bucky shifts, flesh hand twitching over his pocket, and the one thing he’d kept besides Rat-face’s knife: the Soul Stone. The Red Skull mistakes the movement for nerves, continuing like he smells blood in the water.

“Ronan the Accuser is dead. I believe you have made your point quite eloquently.”

Steve crosses his arms. “But you still aren’t making yours.”

“You said you did not know the law of the jungle, Captain, so let me enlighten you—the strength of a man is determined by the company he keeps, and power is the only insurance on survival. Not trust, not this,” the Skulls sneers, “debase, perverted sentiment. _Power_. That is what I offer you. Between the two of us, we could collect the Infinity Stones and be as gods, with Marvel our altar.”

Steve looks at Bucky and Bucky looks at Steve.

“You feelin’ particularly perverted today, Cap?”

“Ravish me on this table, Sergeant,” Steve deadpans, mouth twitching. “That’s an order.”

“Hell, I’d’ve done it for free—”

The Red Skull smashes his hands on the distressed wood. The bottle of Vat 69 tips sideways into the Space Stone and reappears over the stairwell. Steve hears the distant _splat_ of it dying on the flagstones below.

“Why do you insist on ignorance, Captain? I can see in your eyes that in the world of men you were but an ant. Here, you are a superior being. Everything you have ever dreamed you could be. Why would you give that up to return to a life of weakness and mediocrity?”

Bucky sobers up immediately. “Don’t listen to him, Steve, he likes to get in people’s heads—”

“You are only worth anything because the game decided you should be.”

Bucky snaps towards the Skull. “Shut your goddamn _mouth_ —”

Steve blinks. For the first time in a long time, he remembers what it felt like to have a swamp in his lungs, and a back that ached, and eyes that didn’t work. He thinks about returning to that body, curled up on the couch, always rattled by a stiff breeze. And he says, “I would gladly trade this body in if it meant keeping the Stones out of the hands of Nazi bastards like you.”

“I am not a Nazi,” the Skull breathes, shoulders tensing. “And I am not above taking the map from your _corpse_.”

“Finally,” Bucky exhales.

He kicks the edge of the table, sending it flying towards the glinting machines and the Space Stone clattering towards the window. The cube pops things into existence as bounces across the uneven ground: a pile of leaves, the green remnants of the Vat 69 bottle, a Hydra grunt’s hand. Down below, someone is screaming. Up here, Steve elbows Bucky behind him and materializes his shield in time to catch Schmidt’s fist.

The blow sends them stumbling back. Steve can feel it all the way up his arm, into his shoulder and neck.

“Do not look so surprised, Captain—I, too, have been touched by a higher power!”

Steve shakes out his hand, helping Bucky to his feet. “Get the Stone,” he manages.

“Yep,” Bucky breathes, darting around the giant receiver as Steve throws his shield. The Skull dodges, teeth bared. Steve catches the rebound and leaps forward, a bit too eager and wide—Schmidt takes advantage, countering with knuckles to gut and elbow to head. He rips the shield from Steve’s grasp, sending it three inches deep into the drywall on the other side of the room. Bucky pulls back from the near miss just as Steve takes a kick to the knee and a punch to the jaw. He trips over the thick wires curling across the ground.

It’s a familiar feeling. Like getting beat up in a back alley. Something bubbles through his nose, dripping onto the wood. Blood. He spits, squinting up at the Space Stone. He sees it now, played out in his head. Schmidt has the better angle. Unless—

“Steve!” Bucky shouts, digging the shield out of the plaster and frisbeeing it mid-run.

Steve catches it just as Bucky lays his metal fist into the Red Skull’s cheek, curling down to snap Rat-face’s knife from his boot. Schmidt shouts as Bucky makes a graceful lunge for his exposed neck; when he dodges back, he’s met with the full force of Steve’s shield against his shoulders. The two-pronged assault works, right up until Schmidt manages to clip Bucky’s nose. Bucky reels back, Rat-face’s knife skittering from his grip. Steve hesitates. It’s an opening. Between one breath and the next, he’s flying into the already-mangled drywall. The shield rolls out of reach.

Steve drops, dazed.

Bucky takes the opportunity to charge, recklessly herding the Skull towards the Space Stone. He manages to get his metal fingers around Schmidt’s throat, slamming him into the reinforced glass; it cracks, spiderwebbing from the point of impact. The Skull, breath whistling, throws a foot into Bucky’s knee to knock them both off-balance. For one long, horrible second, they scrabble for position on the floor, and then Schmidt’s reaching, and Bucky’s reaching, and—

A blast of blue-white fire, bright enough to sear the backs of Steve’s eyes. When the dust settles, the giant radio receiver creaks ominously overhead, several supports destroyed. Bucky is—

His metal arm’s gone. Destroyed at the shoulder. Disintegrated. He looks like he’s about to pass out.

“I do not lie, Captain,” the Skull pants, rising to his feet, one hand pressed to the cracked glass and the other holding the Space Stone. “And I do not ask for anything twice.”

The mirror of reality cracks as the cube readies itself for another blast; Steve can feel the electricity of it in the air. He knows without knowing that this shot is meant for him. The shield’s out of reach, and he’s out of lives.

He looks at Bucky.

Bucky, who grunts painfully as he pushes himself into the path of the shot—

“ _No!_ ” Steve shouts. It’s ripped from his chest like a beating heart, and all he can see are Bucky’s eyes, the peaceful curve of his mouth as death barrels towards him from behind—

Blue meets orange.

It takes Steve a moment to catch up. To parse out the wave-like break of sunlight curved around Bucky, redirecting the blast of energy back at the Red Skull. Schmidt’s thrown across the room, right into the sparking radio.

The light from the Soul Stone dies.

Bucky slumps forward.

Steve rolls sideways for his shield and then forward, grabbing Bucky’s good arm and kickstarting his jump-boots. The force of the miniature engines sends them barreling towards the breaking window.

Steve hits shield-first and holds on.  

 

 


	21. nineteen/

“Here.”

He sniffs, blinking fast. It’s no good hiding it from Sam, but he’s got to keep up appearances. A bowl of stew steams in his friend’s hands.

“Before you say you don’t want it, let me tell you you’re wrong.”

“You’re on speaking terms with my stomach, now?” Steve’s heart isn’t in it; he just sounds tired. He takes the meal with an appreciative nod.

“Call it a hunch.” Sam hooks his foot around the leg of the match to Steve’s straight-backed chair and drags it next to the bed. The figure on it doesn’t stir. “You gotten any sleep?”

Steve moves the spoon around, feeling petulant. “Some.”

“Dozing doesn’t count.”

Steve shoots him a look and Sam raises his eyebrows, settling in.

Wakanda is a temperate place, impossibly bright after the dank of the Hydra Empire. A mild breeze blows through the open balcony doors, bringing with it the sounds of a distant, vibrant city. The sun dances off its glittering buildings, and what little of the jungle he can see wraps around them like a mother’s embrace.

The high-ceilinged guest room is a study in contrasts: the warm, bright patterns of its fabrics and the sleek, silver forms of its medical equipment. Bucky’s hooked up to a vital signs monitor, which is probably overkill. Still, Steve finds the steadiness of it reassuring:

_Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_.

“I burned another life.”

“Doing what?”

“Trying to speak German.”

“Of course you did.” Sam crosses his arms. “Coulson told us what happens if we reach zero.”

“Yeah.” Steve turns his spoon around. “And we’re the lucky ones.”

“Lucky. Right. S’not like getting killed is painful or anything.”

Steve shrugs. “You walk it off.”

“And the ones who can’t?”

Steve presses the warm porcelain between his fingers, searching Sam’s familiar-unfamiliar face before turning back to the bed. “She protected him. The only reason we got out of there is because of the Soul Stone.”

“Maybe Natasha knew what she was doing.”

“I got the feeling that she always knew what she was doing.”

“How long had she been in here?”

“Since the 80s.”

“Shit.” Sam scratches the back of his neck. “And I can barely survive for a few days on three lives.”

“The learning curve’s pretty steep.”

“This place is like a _Dark Souls_ game.”

Steve manages half-a-smile, a breathy laugh. Bucky’s heartbeat metronomes on. He sets the bowl on the ground between his boots, dropping his elbows onto his knees. “All that work and we still only have two Infinity Stones.”

“You’re not giving up just ‘cause you got your asses kicked once, are you?”

“I told Tony Stark that we have to try to save as many people as we can. I told him sometimes that might not mean everybody, but that if we can’t find a way to live with that—well, then maybe nobody gets saved.” Steve tilts his head, smile close-lipped and self-deprecating. “I think I might be a hypocrite.”

“Why, ’cause you’re having a hard time dealing with the loss of someone on your watch? ‘Cause you don’t want any of us to die? That’s not hypocrisy, Steve. Now do me a favor.”

Steve presses his hands against his thighs. “What?”

“Go get some sleep.”

“Shuri make any headway on the Convergence?”

Sam huffs, mouth pursed. “Nothing new. But she’ll figure it out. T’Challa’s heading up border patrols in the meantime.”

“Right. I should help him.”

“You should _sleep_. I don’t care if you look like him now, you’re not actually Superman—”

“You’re not a doctor.”

“No, but my girlfriend’s a nurse.”

Steve snorts. “Claire’s not your girlfriend.”

“She used the winking emoji.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious!”

Steve watches Bucky’s chest rise and fall. Rise and fall. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_. Sam’s expression is soft.

“Go on, man. I’ll keep watch.”  

 

Watch, as it turns out, is boring.

The chair isn’t very comfortable, more form than function, but somehow Sam manages to doze off, feet propped up on the end of the giant bed and chin drooping to his chest. He snaps to attention when the telltale heartbeat coming from the vitals machine stops.

“Are you a medical professional?” he deadpans, after his own pulse has slowed. Bucky, in the middle of pulling out the rest of his IVs, frowns.

“No.”

“Then _why the hell do you think it’s ok to rip those things out_.”

In response, Bucky drops said things over the side of the bed.

“Oh, that’s how it is?”

Bucky shrugs. The motion’s a little off-balanced—there’s a cap covering the new plug of his left arm. Shuri’s finishing up the replacement. Sam’s wishing T’Challa had let her make it a fancy fashion arm, or at the very least had approved their joint Mrs. Nesbitt cosplay idea.

Whatever. 

Bucky, with some difficulty, maneuvers himself farther up the bed. He’s a tough read. Sam doesn’t quite understand what Steve sees in him, but, then, Steve’s good like that. He reminds Sam intensely of the veterans back at the VA, or Virginia Potts in her sprawling prison: tired and preoccupied.

“How long was I out?”

“Few days. We kept you under for some of it, Shuri had to fix up the nerve endings in your arm.”

He nods, watching the play of light out the balcony window, looking uncomfortable to be dropped into the heart of civilization. “The Reality Stone made this place?”

“They keep telling me that, but then I’ll smell the dirt or stub my toe. It all messes with your head.”

“Is Steve ok?” Bucky’s head moves, just, but he keeps his eyes trained out the window.

“Besides his bruised ego and a sore back from sitting in this chair for so long?” Sam kicks the empty one next to him for emphasis. “Yeah. He’ll heal.”

Bucky finally turns, assessing. Sam raises an eyebrow. Birds swoop by outside. He knows because he can hear them, their incessant, hyperactive thoughts like the backing track to his own. Mostly he feels their joy—free and flying. Alive.

Bucky says, “He’s only got one life left.”

Sam answers, “So do you.”

 

_Tap!_

Steve sits up, blinking blearily.

_Tap!_

He scrubs a hand down his face, scowling at the shadows in the corner of his room. Nothing moves. He turns his attention to the curved balcony doors, bathed in the warm light of a sunset.

_Tap!_

He gets up, padding towards the glass. It’s warm, radiating a gentle heat as he pulls the handle.

A rock sails over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

Bucky’s hanging off the edge of the railing, casual as you please and smiling smugly. They’ve got to be two-hundred feet up.

“What’s it look like I’m doin’? I’m testing out the velocity of my new throwin’ arm. Think I got a chance of joinin’ the Dodgers?”

Steve frowns, scuffing his already mussed hair, suddenly extremely self-conscious of the fact that he’s in a pair of stolen sweatpants and an undershirt. Bucky doesn’t seem to care that he’s free climbing in the same sort of thing; the dead-eye Nirvana smiley leers. “Only if you want to move to LA,” Steve snaps.

“ _What_ ,” Bucky squawks, and lets go.

“ _Jesus Christ_ —”

 

“You’re an idiot,” Steve pants. The floor is cool beneath him, arms spread wide as he attempts to calm down. Above, the sky inches its way towards twilight.

Bucky can’t stop laughing, and it throws off Steve’s best attempts at disapproval—has him snorting within seconds, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. When he manages to calm down, he ventures a glance across his nose.

Bucky meets his eyes and it starts again.

“I can’t—believe—they _moved_ —”

“The look on—your face.” Steve’s almost crying now. “I wish I had a camera—”

“Who’m I supposed to cheer for now? The _Yankees_? I’d rather die!”

“You almost _did_ —”

Bucky drives a fist into Steve’s ribcage. It’s his metal fist, and it hurts. Steve shoots him a baleful look but Bucky’s unperturbed.

“You like it?”

Steve cranes his head back to get a better view: Shuri’s design is sleeker, the metal a dark, granite-gray and jointed gold. His mouth curls. “Yeah.”

Bucky holds it over his head, considering his fingers _onetwothreefourfive_ before dropping it. “I really was testin’ it out. Couldn’t even feel it on my back on the climb over. Stark was good.” Bucky grin is devious. “Shuri’s better.”

“Was that ever even a question?”

“I’m thinking about sending him a telegram. DEAR MR. STARK (stop). WRITING TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE A DEAD HOOFER (stop)—”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means he can’t dance.”

“Jesus, Barnes, you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Nah, but if you’re real lucky I may kiss you.”

A companionable silence grows between them, in time with the slowly darkening sky. The stars blink on one by one by one. Steve cups his palms behind his head.

“Hey.” Bucky levers his elbow, dropping his cheek onto his fist. “I’ve been thinkin’.”

“That can’t be good.”

“This is serious, asshole.”

Steve moves his hands to his stomach. “Ok.”

Bucky sits up abruptly, crossing his legs. “What if, when we get out, I’m—yanno, my age? My actual,” he licks his lips, “age.”

Steve frowns. His kneejerk reaction is to say that the game wouldn’t be that cruel, but he’s got a bad ear and a broken pair of lungs waiting. He asks, softly, “Why are you thinking about that?”

“I dunno.” Bucky leans back on his hands, determinedly careless. “I was just thinkin’ about stuff that I’d want to do when I got out. Stick my toes in the ocean. Eat ice cream. Get sunburned in Prospect Park. Go on a date.” He shrugs. “Can’t do those things if I’m 102.”

“Bucky.”

“Ma always said it ain’t good to borrow trouble, but,” he purses his lips, watching Steve, “you never know with this place.”

Steve swallows. He feels, suddenly, like he had in those final few weeks watching his mom from next to her hospital bed—like he’s battling time. No matter how hard he’d gripped the hours, the clock had ticked on anyway. “Where would you take your date?” 

Bucky’s expression is sly, then melancholy. “Uh, I don’t really know—didn’t used to be able to date.” Steve regrets his question almost immediately, but Bucky soldiers on. “I think—Howard used to put on this Expo up in Queens. Stuff there came straight outta Flash Gordon. Becca used to love it. Be a fun place for a date, I bet.”

Steve, tactfully, doesn’t mention Hammer. “Me, too.”

“What’d’ya say, Rogers? Once we blow this joint—you, me, Queens—”

“Queens, Bucky, so romantic—”

“—bunch of fancy lookin’ robots—”

“—hell yeah—”

“—me ignorin’ you so I can find the Synthetic Man—”

“—you sure know how to make a guy feel special—”

“Oh, I can do that, too,” Bucky assures him.

Steve scrunches up his nose. “Can you, though?”

Bucky’s grinning wickedly when he kisses him and Steve loves it, the feeling against his lips—he greedily samples happiness at the corner of Bucky’s mouth, in the wet slide of his tongue, reaching up to cradle Bucky’s face in his hands and press thumbs to the edges of the crinkling skin around his eyes. Warmth spools low in his gut, a delicious threat; Bucky, leaning over him at an awkward angle, smelling of sweat and jungle and starlight, pulls back.

“There’s a bed,” he manages.

“A bed,” Steve echoes stupidly. “Right.”

Bucky offers Steve a hand. On their feet, they’re separated by inches. Steve crowds closer, stealing another breathy kiss. His hips twitch and Bucky laughs, dragging him into the shadows of the bedroom. He manhandles Steve onto the bed with very little effort; Steve cannot, in any good conscious, say that he minds. Coherent thought leaves entirely when Bucky settles over him, metal hand pressed into his shoulder as he dances his flesh one underneath Steve’s shirt. Light, feather touches, the scratch of nails over his ribs, around the sensitive pebble of his nipple and then down again, playing with the hem of his sweatpants. Steve drags him into a kiss, tugging at Bucky’s collar.

“Please take off this goddamn Nirvana shirt.”

“Sam thought it was funny.”

“I bet.”

Bucky works his way under Steve’s jaw, stubble scraping along his throat. Steve makes an embarrassing sort of noise, a wet pant, a gasp—the feeling goes straight to his cock. In response to Bucky’s self-satisfied smirk, Steve dumps him sideways.

“Hey!”

“Shirt, please,” Steve orders, already tossing his own into the corner of the room, already running his hands up Bucky’s thighs, feeling the way they tense underneath the thin fabric, skirting dangerously close to his hardening cock. Bucky shivers.

“Alright, alright,” he breathes, nearly knocking Steve’s forehead as he sits up. He throws the wadded fabric behind him and flops back, already looking debauched. A small bit of unreadable emotion hovers at the corner of his mouth. He hides it fast behind a crooked grin. “What?”

Steve settles on Bucky’s thighs, pressing a hand to the starburst scar, the only proof that they’d been part of a revolution. He can feel the fast beat of Bucky’s heart through his skin: _badumbadumbadum_ —

“Tryin’ to hold me together, Rogers?”

“Maybe.”

Bucky touches two metal fingers to Steve’s chin. “Ok.”

“Ok.”

Steve presses their foreheads together, curling his arms around Bucky’s head, feeling Bucky’s fingers in the small divot of his back: flesh and metal, metal and flesh. Steve kisses him, and he kisses him, and he kisses him.

_Let me keep kissing him_ , he thinks, trying to grab time.

Bucky dances a skillful hand underneath the waistband of Steve’s sweats and Steve surges forward, overwhelmed, listening to his heartbeat crash in his ears: _BADUM, BADUM, BADUM_ —

When Steve comes, time stops.

 

The night is dark. Steve, sticky and spent and weirdly awake, liberates a pen from the desk on the other side of the room so he can draw galaxies across Bucky’s ribcage.

“He was wrong, you know.”

Bucky’s voice is syrupy, thick with sleep. Steve digs his chin into his tacky chest and looks up. “Who?”

“The Skull. The game didn’t _decide_ you should be like this.”

Steve frowns. “It kind of did—”

“Steve, you’re an idiot.” Bucky taps his shoulder blade. “It’s you. It’s always been you.”

Steve blinks. And blinks again. “What about you?” he finally asks. “You’re nothing like him.”

Bucky’s head lolls sideways, smile small. “I’m everything like him. Ask me how many throats I slit in the name of freedom.”

Steve is silent. Bucky shuts his eyes.

“The serum—it amplifies everything. Good because great. Bad becomes worse. Ever since Kreischberg, I can feel it, just—sittin’. Right here. It’s—”

Steve presses a thumb to the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “All I see is good.”

Bucky makes a noise like a wounded animal.

Steve tries to hold him together.

 

“Hey, Steve, wake up, we got a situ— _shit_ , sorry.” Sam looks up and away, even though Bucky’s nothing but a glare with bedhead hidden under the blankets. “Mazel tov, I guess—”

Bucky throws the lamp at him. In a display of good will, it misses.

“I hate you,” Sam says.

Steve, feeling only slightly mortified, scans the floor for his pants. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is you two need to get dressed—there’s movement at the border.” Sam shakes his head. “Looks like half of Marvel is making a play for the Reality Stone.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	22. twenty/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Holy shit,” Bucky breathes, leaning between the front seats. Steve, sitting passenger, manages, “Yeah.”

The Convergence seethes over the plain of Mount Bashenga, bathing everything in a crimson tint. A magmatic rift, from sky to dusty earth, writhes like a gut wound in midair, bleeding from the swirling vortex above. Sam steers the flat hover car they’d commandeered deftly between the rocky outcroppings; the air seems to thicken as they near. Steve watches the sky crack into nebulae and crack again into a realm of dusty particles and crack again into New York—

“I should warn you,” Sam shouts, over the low hum of the engine and the wind curling through the open top, “things get real weird in the radius of this thing!”

“How weird?” Steve shouts back, trying to get a good view of the energy shield protecting the far side of the plain. In response, Sam, long-suffering, points to Bucky’s metal arm, which has spiraled out of control. The long, spaghetti strip of it pools like a stretched Slinky down the driver’s side seat, and also Sam’s thigh.

“Jesus,” Bucky yelps, tripping backwards. His arm springs into place.

“Like I said,” Sam holds his fingers off the wheel, “weird.”

He steers between two flat troop transports heading for the barrier, aiming for a cluster of rocks. T’Challa turns at their approach; Shuri’s orange raincoat flaps in the breeze as she scrambles down to meet them. Sam cuts the engine.

“Sam said there was movement?” Steve calls, hopping out. The dirt his boots kick up turns to bubbles and floats away. Sam drops next to him, releasing fireflies.

“Sensors picked up incoming forces entering Wakandan airspace—one from the northeast and one from the southeast. Shuri has managed to identify their energy signatures.” T’Challa watches another troop transport float past. “The Black Order and the Collector move to take the Reality Stone.”

Bucky lands heavily on the other side of the car, squinting into the distance. For a moment, his skin turns to starlight. “The Black Order’s bad news.”

“And the Collector’s not?” Sam asks.

“The Collector’ll be leading a militia. Guys he took off the streets of Knowhere. Weapons he stole from a hundred different cultures. The Black Order’ll be leading an army.”

“And we cannot count on the barriers holding for long.” T’Challa’s voice is wry. “Aptly, they have a health bar.”

“Shuri?” Steve jerks his chin towards the rift. “What’s the status?”

She shakes her head. “The Convergence remains incredibly unstable. It’s constantly rewriting its code—there are trillions of possible shutdown combinations. I need _time_.”

Steve feels like he’s unraveling. There’s a rattle in his lungs. He materializes his shield. “Then we’ll buy you som.” He turns to T’Challa. “How many NPCs?”

“Thirty Dora Milaje. A hundred King’s Guard. Fifty warriors from Jabari lands, and fifty from the Border Tribe.”

_Cannon fodder_ , Steve thinks grimly, watching another transport traveling towards them. The figures inside, clad in red and brown and blue, look so _real_ , right up until they reach the edges of the Convergence’s bloody light—then they glitch, bits of code escaping towards the vortex above.

“Well,” Shuri says, after the silence stretches on too long. “If you are going to be fighting a boss battle, you are going to need some gear. Luckily, I have that in spades.”

“Shuri,” T’Challa warns.

“I am serious! Look.” She waves her hand, plucking a small container from the air. “Communications devices. Unlimited range _and_ unaffected by the Convergence’s energy surges. Sam, I’ve added several targeting drones to your inventory; Bucky—here is a gun. Also some specialized grenades. Zero-grav, mag-lev, that sort of thing. It was incredibly difficult to merge them with the current physics engine, so you better use them.”

Bucky salutes. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You are enjoying this too much,” T’Challa sighs.

“And for my brother, this framed picture of Nakia, so that he may carry her with him into battle—”

“Ay! How could you—how did you get that picture of—stop it!”

Shuri tosses the gaudily framed heart at Sam, who avoids being tackled by tossing it to Bucky, who does not avoid being tackled. In the chaos, she pulls Steve aside.

“Steve.”

“Shuri.”

She rolls her eyes, but is smiling. It fades after a moment. “I wanted to apologize. When I brought you _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ , I never thought—”

“Shuri, look at me.”

She frowns up at him.

“None of this is your fault. None of it.” He grins crookedly. “And if you hadn’t, I would’ve never met Bucky.”

They turn. Bucky, in an effort to keep the picture away from T’Challa, has his metal arm extended behind him, his face screwed up in concentration. Shuri laughs.

“Bucky.” Her face lights up. “I have decided to adopt him as my token white brother.”

“I think he’d like that.”

She nods smartly, then hands him a porous metal ball. Steve takes it, confused. She catches his look.

“The Power Stone. Just in case.”

He disappears it into his inventory. “We won’t have to use it. You’ll figure it out.”

“I hope so.” An explosion ripples underfoot. On the other side of the plain, the bright plume of it belches up behind the barrier. “Now, you might want to go see what our visitors want.”

 

Steve and T’Challa make their way towards the blue-tinged barrier, an army at their backs and a shadow swooping overhead—Sam, cutting wide passes along the front lines. Ahead of them, three figures materialize fuzzily through the energy field: two on the left and one on the right, ten feet of space between them.

“T’Challa.”

“Yes?”

“I never did get to thank you.”

“There is no need.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Always so contrary.” T’Challa’s expression is hidden behind the smooth planes of his panther mask. “My friend, if you will not think I did it for you, then think that I did it for myself.” He looks up. They’re far enough from the Convergence that the sky is almost blue. “I used to love this game. How easy it is to take for granted the things we love, especially when they are right in front of us.”

Steve presses his lips together and claps his friend’s shoulder, letting go as they slow to a stop.

The lone man on the right leers eccentrically, accentuated by his wild white hair and his dramatic squint. The wealthy folds of his red suit are covered by a fur cloak; there is mud on his shoes. He frowns down in disdain, wiping the toe on his pant leg. Steve is reminded intimately of the Grandmaster.

The two on the left are more intimidating, by virtue of their weapons—a three-pronged spear resting in the hands of the horned woman, a retractable axe cradled in the palms of her hulking companion.

“You must be the Terrans we heard so much about.” Her voice has a gravel edge. Her eyes glint red. She casually drags her blade along the wall. It sparks. “You think this will stop us?”

“What _right_ ,” the red-suited man declares, hands extended oddly in front of him, “do you have to the Reality Stone? None. It was stolen from _my_ collection—”

“Presumptuous of you to think that collection was yours in the first place.” She bares her teeth. “I, Proxima Midnight, and my compatriot, Cull Obsidian, will have that Stone, and when we finally return to our father, we will bathe the star ways in your blood—”

“I am the Collector, foolish girl! I was alive for the universe’s expansion, the Big Bang itself! I watched the formation of the very singularities which you now seek—”

“And you were banished like the rest of us. If you want a fight, old man, then you will get a fight. The Black Order will raze anyone,” she turns to Steve and T’Challa, “who gets in our way.”

“You may certainly try,” T’Challa replies evenly.

“Oh, but we will.” She levels her spear. Steve hears a rumble in the distance; feels it in the back of his teeth.

The Collector cups his hands around his mouth. “To arms! To arms! To arms!”

 

“Did they surrender?” Bucky asks.

Steve grimaces, taking his place on the front line. “Not exactly.”

The barrier is already under attack, a hail of bright fire bombs bursting across its surface. He tightens his grip on his shield’s leather straps.

“Ready!” T’Challa shouts.

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum_.

“You with me, Barnes?”

“‘Til the end of the line, pal.”

 

“Sam, focus fire on the left flank!”

“On it!”

“T’Challa, what’s your status?”

“Alive.”

“Shuri—”

“Still working, still working!”

Steve turns towards Bucky and gets clocked across the face by one of the snarling, dog-like creatures that make up the Black Order’s army. He smashes his shield against skin the consistency of a just-picked scab, one, two, and then Bucky’s there, hauling it back by the scruff of the neck before shooting it cleanly between the eyes.

“Told you the Black Order was trouble.”  

“Told you so,” Steve huffs, “really?”

Bucky winks, skipping one of Shuri’s triangular grenades into the fray. It bursts in a well of homemade gravity. Bones crack. Steve can hear the sharpness of it, crushing the creatures even as they gnash and gnaw. His earpiece crackles.

“Steve,” Sam warns. “You got incoming.”

A midnight-colored energy blast crashes into his shield, dissipating across the surface. Twenty-feet away, Proxima Midnight lowers her spear. Steve exhales.

“Incoming just came in.”

She charges through a gap in the chaos, vaulting off the back of one of her soldiers. Better vantage for her throw—Steve turns, catching the spear’s shaft and swinging its momentum around to drive it back. It leaves his hands with a hiss, coiling to the ground in silver loops. A snake. Proxima, rolling to her feet, snaps a hand around the reptile’s neck and brings her spear to bear against his shield.

“You will fall,” she tells him, pressing forward.

“I’ll get back up,” Steve assures her.

She smiles viciously and then flinches back with a hiss. A line of bright blue blood trails down her cheek. She turns the fury of her gaze on Bucky, who lowers his gun.

She raises her wrist to her mouth.

“I’ve engaged,” she says. “Take it.”

Bucky frowns. “Who the hell are you talking t—”

Shuri’s shout echoes over the coms, followed almost immediately by T’Challa’s frantic, “ _Shuri!”_

Steve meets Bucky’s wide-eyed gaze and punches Proxima Midnight in the face. As she staggers, Bucky slings his gun across his back.

“Can you—?”

Steve nods. “Go.” 

Bucky watches him for _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_ before dodging into the fight.

“T’Challa!” Steve readies his shield as Proxima Midnight regains her footing. “Stay where you are, we need you to hold the right flank—Sam!”

His friend’s winged-shadow cuts across the field.

“On my way!”

 

Sam streaks towards the Convergence. The air stings his cheeks, bites the exposed bit of skin around his elbow, but no matter how fast he’s going it’s not fast enough. It’s like he’s up here just to watch.

Shuri gets batted aside, rolling to a stop.

Does she even have three lives? If she dies in the game, does her consciousness die in real life? How does that even _work_?

The tree trunk alien, skin like bark, raises his axe over his head and brings it down.

Sam flinches.

It’s a hiccup in his flight pattern; down below the mountain ridge, he can hear the frantic flight of two dozen birds driven from their perches in the jungle trees by the force of his thoughts. And Shuri—

_Alive_ , Sam thinks giddily, watching a sea of bubbles drift past the alien’s face. The creature snorts, waving them away. The axe is gone. 

“Lucky,” the alien growls, and all Sam can see as he pulls back his fist is Shuri’s face, her raised chin, defiant—

Bucky catches it.

Sam whoops, which is about as close as he’s going to get to admitting he’s impressed. Bucky’s feet carve paths through the dirt but his new arm holds, stopping the alien’s momentum just as Sam folds his wings and drops. He smashes his feet into the side of the creature’s scaly face, knocking him back into the thrall of the Convergence.

The alien falls in neat blocks to the dusty plain. Sam, scrambling for a messy landing, accidentally punts the one containing the black pool of his still-blinking eye.

“You ok?” Bucky asks, helping Shuri to her feet and checking her over with a brother’s clinical eye.

“Yes, yes!” she huffs, shaking her broken earpiece to the ground. “I am _fine_. He just startled me!”

“Startled me, too.” Sam pushes his goggles up his forehead and shakes his head at Bucky. “Man, you are not human.”

Bucky’s answering smile is grim. “Not all the way.”

“What, you got a third nipple or something?”

“Fuck off.”

“I hate you.” Sam turns to Shuri. “Any progress?”

Her eyes dart sideways. She presses her lips together. “Yes.”

“And?” Sam prompts, a little impatiently. He’s too amped up on the noise of the battle and the thought of Steve finally getting to live out his secret dream of being an ultimate fighter—

“Without a stabilizing agent, and given the limited time frame, the most I can do is reverse the Convergence’s effects.”

“Which means?”

“I can pull the games apart.”

Sam narrows his eyes. “There a reason you don’t sound happier about that?”

“Because it would remove us from Marvel.”

“That’s good. That’s good, isn’t it?”

Shuri’s demeanor is uncharacteristically flat, her voice uncharacteristically small. “It would only remove those who came into Marvel through _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ ”

Sam shakes his head. “Not an option.”

“Then you’re a goddamn idiot.”

“Excuse me?”

Bucky scrubs his metal hand down his face. He looks tired and resigned. Like he’s not at all surprised by the other shoe finally dropping. Again, Sam is reminded of the men and women at the VA—soldiers convinced they didn’t deserve happiness, who didn’t believe it would last even if they managed to find it. “I’m not lettin’ you guys throw away your one chance at leaving ‘cause of me.”

“I don’t think that’s your executive decision to make,” Sam says coolly, crossing his arms.

“It’s the only decision. The only one.” Bucky exhales. “Let me have this. I can’t get back home, but I can have this. Please.”

“Bucky,” Shuri breathes. He turns to her, smile soft.

“Shuri. Yanno, you remind me of my youngest sister. Sharp as a tack and twice as brave.” He clucks her under the chin with his metal hand. “You took good care of me. You take good care of them, ya hear?”

Shuri’s lip quivers. When she hugs him, it’s tight and desperate, enough to make Bucky freeze. Sam, feeling unsteady, gestures to the idiot’s outstretched arms.

After a beat, Bucky hugs back.

“Steve will never go without you,” Sam says. “You know that, right?”

“Get T’Challa.” Bucky untangles himself from Shuri’s embrace. He tilts his head back towards the Convergence. “And do your thing, kid.”

 

“That’s good. That’s good, isn’t—”

Steve catches Proxima’s fist with his face and the earpiece cracks. Sam fizzles out before Steve can hear the end of his sentence; this is the least of his problems. His vision’s beginning to blur. His gut pulses with his heartbeat. He keeps seeing Agent Coulson out of the corner of his eye. _Low health, low health_ —the world is red. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_. It takes him a moment to realize that’s the Convergence.

Proxima Midnight steps back. “You fight well, for a human.”

Steve spits blood and bile. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

“But I am. There have been so few of you, and most of you die so quickly.”

“What about you?” Steve points to the cut on her cheek. “You bleed, too.”

“I serve a higher purpose.”

“And that’s keeping you alive?”

“No. That would be my will.”

She leads with her spear, purple energy dancing between the prongs like Tesla coils. Steve makes to counter, except his shield turns into a dinner plate. One of his mom’s, part of the good china. The spear rips through Kevlar instead, dancing deep across bone, right down the line of his shoulder.

“My will, which will drive me to the Reality Stone, and then any Stone after; which will see the Black Order home, to our father, where we will present the items he has so long sought and finally reshape the cosmos—”

“You talk too much,” Steve says, blood dripping into the curve of his palm, dark dots on the yellow-green grass, and—

Something arcs over Proxima Midnight’s head: one of Bucky’s grenades. It bursts on the ground just behind her. Steve’s ears pop as the gravity goes out. Proxima floats towards the swirling rift above them, and Steve’s close behind—the blood dripping between his fingers drifts in viscous bubbles past his face. He tries to swim sideways, out of range, but he’s got no weight for leverage—

Someone fists a hand in his collar and drags him back. Outside the grenade’s influence, he falls onto a warm body.

“I think you broke a rib,” Bucky winces.

“I didn’t,” Steve says, something loosening in his chest. His fingers dance across Bucky’s face. Bucky grabs his hand and pulls it gently away. “Shuri?”

“She’s fine—you hear her plan?”

Steve gestures to his ear. “Comm broke when I got punched.”

“Maybe you should stop getting punched.”

“Ha.”

“She’s making another barrier. Stronger. Concentrated around the Convergence—good place for a tactical retreat.”

Steve frowns. He gets up, helping Bucky. “I don’t want to run.”

Bucky shrugs. “Sometimes you don’t get a choice.”

Steve glances around the battlefield. There’s too many of the Black Order’s snarling soldiers, too many of the Collector’s volunteers. And Bucky, holding out his hand.

Steve takes it.

Bucky tugs them up the plain, darting between bodies. The Convergence grows above them. Steve can see Shuri, her hands dancing intricately between strands of red, can see T’Challa and Sam, standing guard a few feet behind. He can feel the sharp sting of Proxima’s wound eating into his shoulder. He can feel the warmth of Bucky’s flesh hand in his own. And then—

The noise is gone. The sounds of battle, blotted out. Silence: the beat of his heart. _Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum_. Bucky’s hand slips out of his grasp. He turns, frowning. He almost trips over his own feet. Bucky is—

Bucky is standing on the other side of the barrier. It’s faintly red. A warm red; turning orange like fall leaves. The fight rages on the other side, but Steve can’t hear it. Can only hear his heartbeat:

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

“Bucky, come on.”

Bucky puts his hand to the wall and presses. It does not give.

“Shuri!” Steve calls, wrist itching. “Shuri, something’s wrong, he can’t—”

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice is muffled. A distant echo through a large ocean. A shout in an empty forest.

“What the hell is this?” Steve asks.

“The Reality Stone’s what brought you here. Shuri’s figured out a way to reverse it. She can get you home.”

Steve slams his hand into the barrier. “No, not without you!”

“I’ve already lost everyone, I can’t lose you, too—”

“You don’t get to make that decision for me, Barnes!” Steve snarls, feeling on the verge of an asthma attack. He slams his fist into the energy field; the light bruises. He does it again. And again. And again. It doesn’t break. It doesn’t break. It _doesn’t break_ —he presses his forehead against it, fingers splayed and panting hard.

“Steve.” Bucky leans close. “This is my choice.”

Steve shuts his eyes.

“I can’t get home. But you can. You can stick your toes in the ocean. Eat ice cream. Get sunburned in Prospect Park.” Bucky pauses, licking his lips. “Go on a date.”

Steve can hardly breathe. His body’s already disobeying him; there’s already a rattle in his lungs. If he could just get to Shuri. If he could just get to Shuri, he could convince her to stop this, but he can’t move. Bucky slots his hand in place on the other side and Steve can’t move. Steve can’t feel anything, except how he’s beginning to unravel.

“I wish,” Bucky exhales. “I wish we had more time. Steve, I—”

 

 


	23. twenty-one/

Steve falls onto his couch.

The world is blurry, but for reasons that have nothing to do with low health bars and everything to do with his astigmatism. Shuri is throwing off a pair of VR goggles and shoving her Super Nintendo as far away from Marvel as it’ll go; the cartridge is smoking, soldered to the plastic. T’Challa sets it on the floor. He looks disoriented, blinking rapidly as he considers Steve’s pitted coffee table and tilted entertainment unit and Sam, clambering up drunkenly.

Steve’s lungs rattle. When he looks down, his right hand is thin and graceful. An artist’s hand, to go along with his rail-thin arms and skinny chest. There’s something clutched in his left. He feels both entirely present and entirely nonexistent, like he’s just woken up from the world’s longest nap. His glasses, broken cleanly in half, are sitting on the edge of the table next to Peggy’s board game. The lacquered wood reads MARVEL. Steve opens his fist.

He’s holding a blue token. A gauntlet with six slots: four across the knuckles, one on the thumb, and one on the back of the hand. Two of them glow with faceted light, purple and red, red and purple. Power and reality; reality and power. Steve’s chest is telltale tight, his breath a borderline wheeze as he drops to his knees and drags the board towards him.

“Steve,” Sam manages, “man, I don’t think that’s such a good—”

Steve flips open the panels onto the maze of white spaces, empty except for the three occupied by red, gold, and silver tokens. He sets the blue gauntlet at the beginning of the twisting path, watching the winking Stones trapped inside.

“—idea.”

“The game,” Shuri breathes, the pained look on her face momentarily replaced by discovery. “It knew you had the Power Stone in your inventory, and it must have given you the Reality Stone in transit—”

“So?” Sam pushes to his feet, linking his hands on top of his head. “That’s not an invitation to keep playing. Bucky didn’t make sure you got back here just so you could go be a hero, Steve—”

“You saw the cutscene, right? The Mission Briefing?” Steve sits back on his heels, body finally small enough to fold how he wants. “What if it was more than a cutscene?”

T’Challa frowns. “You mean what if Marvel can actually swallow worlds?”

“How do you think everything got in there? Not all of it was virtual.”

“Then this is _way_ beyond our paygrade.”

“Sam—”

“Steve. Look me in the eyes and tell me this isn’t about Bucky.”

Steve meets his gaze stonily but says nothing. After a beat, Sam kneels down, digging a hand into his shoulder.

“We only get the one life out here.” 

Steve presses his fingers to his eye, imagining the ghost of Bucky’s hand tracing down his spine—but not this spine. Not a crooked spine. It’d been straight. Steve had been strong. Now he’s just—

“There has to be another way,” Shuri breathes. “There’s always another way—”

“Not always,” T’Challa says gently.

“Do you _have_ to be pragmatic right now?”

“It’s dangerous, Shuri.”

“So is riding a bike! So is driving your Lexus! So is attempting to create genetically modified spiders in your friend’s dorm room—”

“—wait, what?”

“—and my _point_ is that no scientist ever discovered anything of importance by playing,” she prods his chest, “it,” she repeats for emphasis, “ _safe_ ,” she finishes with a flourish.

 Steve appreciates her immensely, but he’s also thinking of Peggy’s plea as she’d pressed the board into his hands. He says, “I think—”

The air cracks. His ears pop. Every hair on the back of his neck rises in time with the shiver clawing its way up his spine. Sam drops his hands and says, slowly, “What the hell…?”

_Knock._

_Knock._

_Knock._

“Not interested,” Steve calls, standing up. He pads softly across the floor and into the kitchen, lit green by the digital readout flashing on the microwave. He slides open the oven drawer with his toes and pulls out his mom’s old cast iron frying pan.

_Knock._

_Knock._

_Knock._

T’Challa pushes gracefully to his feet, movement reminiscent of the Black Panther as he steps in front of his sister. Sam makes a quiet leap over the couch to grab a pair of scissors on the dining room table, sitting tilted next to Steve’s mostly empty sketchbook.

Steve slides towards the entryway; the feeling in his gut makes him stop to slip on his ratty sneakers. Adjusting his grip on the frying pan, he pushes onto his toes so he can peer out the peephole.

A skull stares back.

Steve stumbles away. “The fire escape, go—”

The door’s ripped the wrong way, hinges snapping under pressure as the force on the other side drags it through the jamb, crumbling brick and plaster. Steve trips, falling into the kitchen and smacking his head on the linoleum. The world fuzzes black, narrows to the Red Skull as he steps idly inside.

Out of the colorful confines of Marvel, Johann Schmidt’s skin has turned the same mottled shade as rotting flesh—soft and bruised, like an overripe peach left in the sun. He does not fit. He _should not be here_ —

“Is this the fabled American dream?” he asks, glancing around Steve’s rent-controlled apartment. His mouth twists in distaste. “Well. I suppose pride really goeth before the fall.”

“Man, I don’t know who the hell you are, but that’s not stopping the whole ‘pride-fall’ thing from seeming a bit rich,” Sam says.

“Where is the one you call Captain America?”

“You’re talking to him.”

The Skull smiles. “I think not.”

“It’s ‘cause I’m black, isn’t it.”

“It is because you lack conviction. And that look in your eyes.”

“What look?”

“That you have something to prove.” The Skull’s head twitches. His wrist moves. The air cracks with white-blue light and Steve hears someone land among the boxes in the master bedroom; Sam, probably, flung _through_ the wall. Nausea twists his gut. Schmidt steps past. “I do not ask for things twice.”

“And we do not entertain stupid questions,” T’Challa says evenly.

“Then you are useless to me as well.”

Steve rolls to his side, pressing knuckles to the floor just as T’Challa sails past, hurled by a lick of blue energy through the broken doorway and onto the landing.

“Brother!” Shuri sucks in a breath. “We don’t know where he is, and even if we did, we would not tell—” Her shout turns into a muffled protest.

“You are protecting him. You cannot protect him from me.”

Steve pushes to his knees.

“And this—it has been so long since I have seen the game itself. Dr. Zola was convinced that he could use it to harness the power of the gods without angering the gods themselves. It worked, for a time. As most of his experiments did.” Schmidt pauses. “‘A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind. The exciting consequences of this game will vanish only when a player has collected all six Infinity Stones and called out Marvel.’ Such words have changed the course of men’s lives.”

Steve walks out of the kitchen. He sees the Skull’s back and his waxy, knucklebone hand as it reaches for the blue gauntlet; he sees Shuri, frozen and floating in midair, outrage written across her face. He meets her eyes.

The Skull says. “Three Infinity Stones in one place. Can you imagine the Hydra Empire I will resurrect?”

Steve slams the frying pan across the back of Schmidt’s head. It’s nothing like his shield—the impact reverbs painfully up his arm, and it barely leaves a dent. Schmidt turns, teeth bared, and Steve smashes it across his face, feeling the sharp, pointed hollow of the Skull’s nose crack as the man stumbles into the TV. The blue energy buoying Shuri evaporates and she drops, flipping the board game shut. She looks at Steve.

“Get your brother,” he heaves, heart racing, body betraying him. “We’ll meet you outside.”

“Steve—”

“ _Go_!”

Shuri nods, sliding over the coffee table and sprinting towards the landing. Schmidt rises, raging. Steve levels the frying pan, stepping between him and the door.

“You were looking for me?”

The Red Skull, dark, almost black blood leaking from the gaping pit of his nose, smiles. “Captain America. I do not enjoy being humiliated.”

“How did you get here?”

“But my anger, it abates. It seems I was right. Without the game, you are truly nothing.”

“How the hell did you get here?”

“I was invited.”

“What?”

“I needed an anchor point for the Space Stone. You gave me two.” Schmidt’s smile turns wolfish and pleased. “I have seized my moment.”

“This isn’t Marvel.”

“No. It is someplace better. More poetic.” He tilts his head. “You should have taken my offer when you had the chance. You could have been extraordinary.”

“I’ll settle for ordinary.”

“I will have that game. And all those inside it.”

“Not gonna happen,” Steve says, and charges.

The Skull waves his hand. Steve’s jerked sideways, jamming his elbow as he rolls to a stop in front of the hallway. He scrambles for the master bedroom.

“There is nowhere to run, Captain America! Nowhere to go that the Space Stone cannot find you!”

Steve slams the door shut behind him. “Sam!”

“Here,” Sam groans from among an avalanche of Sarah Rogers’ things on the floor: her sunny bedspread, her books. There’s a gash on his forehead, blood dotting the corner of the nightstand. “I just got ghosted through a wall, but it’s whatever—”

“We have to get out of here, come on—”

“Who the hell _is_ that guy?”

“The Red Skull. Part of an off-shoot Nazi faction.”

“A genocidal maniac _and_ the guy who kicked your ass when you were big and could toss people around? Great.”

The window sticks with disuse. Sam throws his shoulder into it, breaking the latch. The fire escape outside is coated in bird shit, and the air is biting cold. Steve feels it painfully, breath whistling up his throat. Sam makes him clamber down the stairs first.

They’re almost to the sidewalk when his apartment explodes.

Blue fire. The heat of it. The pressure. It blows out almost all the glass on this side of the building. Sam forces his arm over Steve’s head and Steve elbows him in the ribs, watching the pieces catch the white-winter light as they rain onto the street. The screaming’s next, the growing wave of panic: residents trying to figure it out. There’s no fire. The blast had just—disintegrated everything. T’Challa’s scarf. Steve’s sketchbook, with the half-finished picture of his mother. Bucky’s black-and-white photograph.

“Steve—” Sam starts, brushing glass off his shoulders.

“Let’s go,” Steve says, dropping towards the street.

 

“We got a problem.” Sam skids to a stop in front of T’Challa’s Lexus. “A homicidal, Nazi-shaped problem.”

Steve follows at a more sedate pace, determined as he pushes through the growing crowd of passerby pointing up at the ruined wreckage of his apartment. He can hear sirens in the distance.

“Get in,” T’Challa orders. Steve stops near the front license plate, ignoring Shuri’s wild gesticulations. T’Challa knocks on the hood.

“We have to get to the Wakanda Design Group—”

“We have to play the game.” Steve catches their incredulous looks and points to the board in Shuri’s hands. “It’s right in the instructions: ‘The exciting consequences of this game will vanish only when a player has collected all six Infinity Stones and called out Marvel.’”

Sam watches him. “You think you can send him back.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Steve shakes his head. “It’s our best shot.”

The screams intensify. When he dares a glance, the Red Skull’s walking calmly down the front steps of the shattered building, adjusting his cuffs.

Steve holds out his hand. “There’s no time.”

Shuri presses her lips together but passes Marvel to him. It feels alive in his grip: _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_. He can feel its pulse in the pads of his fingers.

“The Skull thinks I took the game,” she says, voice pitched low and eyes trained on the growing mayhem. “We can distract him. It won’t work for long, but it should give you a head start.”

Steve’s kneejerk reaction is no— _no, I don’t want you involved; no, I don’t want you to get hurt; no, this is my problem, not yours_ —but the only reason he’d gotten this far is because of the people standing next to him.

No man is an island.

Especially not Steve Rogers.

“Tony Stark thought the law of the jungle was survival of the fittest. The Skull thought that power was its only insurance.” He licks his lips. “I think that the only law of the jungle is trust. If you trust in your friends, you’ll find strength in numbers. Take care of each other.”

“You come up with that off the top of your head, or you write it down first?”

“Shut up, Sam.”

“Nope.”

T’Challa smiles, patting the top of his car. “I will try to get ahold of Nakia. She has connections in the city who should be able to help. We will distract the Skull as long as we can.”

“Which, knowing my brother’s driving,” Shuri mutters, “won’t be very long—”

“Hey,” T’Challa warns, dropping into the driver’s seat. Steve and Sam step onto the sidewalk, making way for the sudden squeal of tires as he lays on the horn and leaps up the road. Shuri sticks her head out the window.

“WAKANDA FOREVER!” she shouts, flipping off the Skull. Steve’s mouth curls as he drags Sam into the nearest alley. It smells of piss, and the standing water has frosted over.

“You’re not gonna fight me on this?” Sam asks.

“On what?”

“On staying.”

“Of course not.” Steve glances up. He brushes his bangs off his forehead. “I need your help.” He drops to his knees, pulling open the board. The blue gauntlet had been upended by the journey, settling near the green jewel in the center. Steve places it back at the start and fishes out the dice from one of the side panels.

“Wait.”

“What?”

Sam flips open the rest. “There’s not another game token.”

“So?”

“So, I can’t play.” Sam tries to pry up the gold, red, and silver gauntlets, but they hold fast. “Whose pieces even are these?”

“One thing at a time.”

“That’s not a plan.”

Steve raises his eyebrow. “Who said we had a plan?”

He rolls.

The dice bounce across the gameboard. _One—two—three—_ stop. There’s a long pause. The world, holding its breath. Steve feels like he’s sitting at the top of the Cyclone; for a moment, he can picture it. The view of the slate-gray ocean and the parking lot and the Wonder Wheel. His mom’s smile as she holds up her hands. 

Then, dragged by some invisible force, the blue token shudders forward seven spaces. When it stops, a gold mist begins to bleed across the center jewel, shaping words from the darkness.

“‘Mind your head and watch your feet,’” Steve reads slowly, “‘you’ll find more time at Bleeker Street.’”

“It rhymes. Cute.”

“I think it’s catchy.” Steve glances over. “What’s—”

Sam raises his hands. “I’m not doing it,” he says, of the golden sparks that’ve appeared in a hissing circle around his feet. He opens his mouth to say something else and falls through the sidewalk with a yelp. The portal closes in his wake. It leaves behind a business card.

“Sam?” Steve whispers loudly, reaching forward to pick up the thick, cream-colored paper. He flips it around with a frown.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	24. twenty-two/

The building belongs uptown. Somewhere on the Upper East Side—one of those fancy apartment blocks with the Doric columns on either side of the doors and the pristine white façades. Miles away from Brooklyn, except maybe for the crappy Toyota Corolla double-parked out front.

Steve spend ten minutes he doesn’t have standing in the shadows of the bodega across the street, but no one goes in and no one comes out. He glances down at the business card one last time before jogging across the road, Marvel pressed tight to his side. He knocks on the front door.

_Knock._

_Knock._

_Kno—_

He’s swaying in a dark room, trying to regain his equilibrium and keep the meager contents of his stomach. The green walls are the color of leaves at night, the cherry wood paneling richly burgundy. He stares at artifacts he has no name for, preserved carefully behind glass or hung haphazardly near the doorway. The whole place has the air of the eccentric hoard of an old, private collector.

“Steven Rogers.”

The voice is deep, the rasp slight, the accent American. Steve turns towards the round window through which the winter light spills and finds a figure floating calmly in front of it. The fabric of the man’s cape billows like a sail as he drifts forward.

“Captain America.”

The closer he gets, the easier he is to make out: distinctly human, face sliced by prominent cheekbones, a bit of gray distinguishing the corner of his temples. The collar of his crimson cape curls up near his ears and around his neck is an eye-shaped amulet—hefty bronze, cut across with strange runes.

Steve frowns.

“You can put down the game,” the man tells him, boots finally hitting the floor. “No one will take it from you here.”

Between one glance and the next, a small table appears to Steve’s left. He carefully sets Marvel down. “What about my friend, did you take him?”

The man considers, leaning forward. “Your friend? Oh.” He straightens. “Yes, your friend. A bit of insurance, to make sure you’d come—you’ll get him back, same as the game.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Doctor Stephen Strange, and I have some questions for you. Take a seat.”

Steve finds himself sitting in a plush leather chair, in a room with the same elegantly textured walls. It’s brighter than the previous, sunlight pouring through a group of picture windows behind the wizard’s straight-backed seat. There’s a globe by Dr. Stephen Strange’s head, but Steve doesn’t recognize any of the landmarks. In fact, it looks a lot like his map of Marvel. 

“Tea?” Dr. Strange asks.

“No, thank you.”

“Hm. Well, as you may have guessed, I am the keeper of the Eye of Agamotto.”

“Sorry?”

“The relic created by the first Sorcerer Supreme to hold the power of the Time Stone?” He presses his lips together. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you.”

“You have the Time Stone?”

“Yes. And you’re here to take it from me.”

Steve goes on the defensive and Dr. Strange holds up his gloved hands.

“You won’t find a fight. I’m trapped in the Sanctum until someone can beat the game, I will gladly give you the Stone—if you can pass the test.”

“What test?”

“Oh, it’s quite simple, really. I have placed a beginner’s spell of protection on my amulet.” He gestures to the eye sitting on his chest. “It’s a very unpretentious and modest incantation, but quite unbreakable. Except,” he holds up a finger, “by one who is worthy.”

“Alright.” Steve leans forward, brushing back his bangs. “What do I have to do?”

“You just have to take it off me.”

“Just,” Steve opens and closes his hand, “grab it?”

“Yes. Just ‘grab it.’ Of course,” Dr. Strange pauses, seesawing his head, “if you aren’t found to be worthy, it will burn your hand off. And possibly your entire arm. There’ve only been two cases of spontaneous combustion, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that—”

“Great.”  

“You’ll do fine,” Dr. Strange assures him, standing. Steve follows.

“If I die,” he asks, “can you at least release my friend?”

The wizard inclines his head. “You have my word.”

Steve meets his eyes and nods. He takes a breath, as deep as he can. He’s died twice already; that still hasn’t prepared him for a third. He should think of something happy. He should think of something happy.

Bucky. On the Grable, sitting in front of the holo-table. The soft look in his eyes as he talked about his sisters.

Steve reaches.

His hand closes around the amulet. He feels the burnished, etched metal of it like a shock, zapping up his arm. Something hums. For a moment, it gets hot, hot in his hand, and then—

“Congratulations,” Dr. Strange says, as it comes away in Steve’s grip. “You are worthy.”

Steve exhales. “Thank you. I—”

“Now comes the hard part.”

Steve _clacks_ his teeth together and waits for an explanation. Dr. Strange gestures vaguely to the study, and the empty, echoing house beyond.

“The Sanctum is located out of the reach of space and time—an anomaly on the face of the continuum. Practically unfindable. You cannot take the Stone from its confines without first anchoring it to your timeline.”

“You mean—put it someplace I’ve been.”

“Well.” Dr. Strange shuts one eye. “In layman’s terms, yes. Or someplace you’re going to be. Except I would not put it now, because you have a madman on your heels. It’s taking all my power to keep him from teleporting here with the Space Stone.”

Steve turns the Eye of Agamotto over in his palm. He couldn’t stash it in his apartment—it’d be destroyed by the time he got out. Anywhere else seemed too risky. He couldn’t guarantee it’d be safe, even if he went back an hour and buried it in one of the planters outside. He keeps turning it. It’s hefty. Heftier than it looks. And it itches like a word on the tip of his tongue—

  _Oh._

It’s Peggy’s amulet. The one he’d found in the box labelled HOWARD STARK 1945-19??. Which meant she’d had it, all this time. Ever since—

“I know where to put it.”

Dr. Strange inclines his head. “Then the floor is yours.”

Steve shuts his eyes.

 

“‘…me for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind…’”

Steve opens his eyes.

He’s standing in some sort of office, full of menacing, industrial machines, spotlights and thick loops of wire. A map of the world is pinned through at Berlin, at London, at New York. Behind him: a stunning view of the Alps, mountains rising like the marbled, snow-covered nubs of some giant’s spine.

The Eye of Agamotto is open, iris a bright, vibrant green. The light curls in runes up his arm. He feels the weight of years when he tries to move. The voices echo.

Three people are gathered around a chrome table. Steve can make out all of them in profile: the Hollywood debonair with the thin mustache and the eternally expressive eyebrows who must be Howard Stark; the agent with the perfectly painted lips who must be Peggy (Peggy as she had been, Peggy with the hands that didn’t shake and the gaze that could cut through steel and the tongue that could kill a man); and there—

“What are you doing?” Bucky asks. Steve stops next to him. Invisible. A man out of time. He holds the pads of his fingers to Bucky’s cheek, but Bucky doesn’t move. It’s weird, having to look up. Like Steve’s meeting him again for the first time. He’s more carefully put together than the man on the operating table, partly a product of his coiffed hair and partly a product of his neutral expression, but there’s darkness sitting at the corner of his mouth, and Steve can trace the invisible fractures under his skin. Bucky presses his left hand to his right elbow, dancing around hidden puncture wounds.

“What’s it look like? It’s a board game. Ergo,” Howard shakes the dice in his palm, _clack-clack-clack_ , “we play the board game.”

“Let’s take it back to the SSR, _then_ you can test it. Hell, I’m sure Zola would give us something on it, the guy sings better than a canary—”

“Peg?” Howard asks, and Steve drops his hand. He turns to the table. The now-familiar Marvel is spread across it. As he watches, Peggy slings her gun across her hip so she can fish out what’s left of the game pieces. She holds one to the light.

“Jesus,” Bucky says, tipping the board. “Don’t they know there’s a war goin’ on?” He hinges the side panels so he can make out MARVEL carved across the front and then dumps the whole thing back on the table. “Carter, you’re not serious.”

_Keep talking,_ Steve thinks. _Please keep talking_.

“Unfortunately,” Peggy sighs, setting a token down. “I’d like to know what we’re dealing with before we bring it back into a highly populated area.”

Bucky shakes his head. Howard holds out the dice.

“Ladies first.”

There’s a knucklebone rattle as they bounce across the board.

“I can’t believe you rolled doubles on your first turn,” Howard mutters. Peggy reaches across the table to twist his ear and then down to grab her red gauntlet where it sits on the half-moon starting tile, only to find it trundling forward on its own.

“What,” Bucky says, “the fuck.”

“Magnets. Must be—magnets.” Howard waves his hands above the board. “Some sorta connection with the poles, maybe—”

“Is that magnetization, too?” Peggy asks, pointing to the green jewel in the center of the game. Gold mist forms across its opaque surface.  

“‘A lucky roll you haven’t earned,’” Bucky reads, “‘a gift for you with this free turn.’”

Steve drops the amulet onto the board. He feels time, his own time, closing back around him, vice-like around his ankles, his wrists, his chest. He turns. “Bucky, I—”

But Bucky doesn’t hear him, and it doesn’t matter, anyway, because between one blink and the next, Steve’s gone.

 

He lands in the entryway of the Sanctum.

“Well?” Dr. Strange asks, standing by the wide staircase. Steve looks around the dark, mystic grandeur and all he can see are Bucky’s eyes.

“Yep.”

“Excellent. Now, can I offer you and your game and your friend a portal somewhere?”

Between one glance and the next, a small table appears to Steve’s left. He carefully picks Marvel up. He looks right just in time to see Sam land flat on his face.

“Nine out of ten,” Steve chirps, even as something loosens in his chest. “You botched the landing.”

“Shut up,” Sam warns, even as he takes Steve’s hand.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Falling. For, like, half-an-hour, so thanks for that—”

“A portal?” Dr. Strange repeats. “Somewhere far away from here?”

“Shady Acres Care Home,” Steve says. “Please.”

Sam, in the middle of dusting off his shirt and sizing up Stephen Strange, takes a moment to look incredulously at Steve. “Did you forget about the fact that you’ve been banned?”

“Sounds like a party,” Dr. Strange deadpans, making a few complicated gestures with his hands as he pulls another glowing circle into existence. Steve can see the familiar, brick-faced structure of Peggy’s nursing home just beyond it. “Oh, and Captain America?”

Steve turns. Dr. Strange gives a tight-lipped smile.

“Bye,” he says, and sends the portal racing towards them.

 

 


	25. twenty-three/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Reckoning 2: Wrath of Nurse Linda

“Hello, welcome to Shady Acres, how can I direct your—” Nurse Linda, currently on front desk duty, looks up with a pleasant smile, and then a less pleasant smile, and then no smile at all as she inhales, outrages, “ _YOU!”_

Steve waves. “Hi, ma’am.”

Then he books it down the hall.

“ _STOP!”_

“Question,” Sam asks, having no problem keeping up.

“Yeah?” Steve gulps, trying to figure out if the stairs or the elevator would be faster and if the speed boost is worth the potential asthma attack.

“Why the hell didn’t you have the wizard portal us into her room?”

“I didn’t want to give her a heart attack.” He kicks over a water cooler, which temporarily slows the gaggle of angry nurses on their heels.

“Peggy would’ve been fine, you just wanted to make a dramatic entrance.”

Steve punches the UP button and is rewarded by the immediate _ping_ of the elevator doors opening. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re a dramatic asshole. Were you in the theater program?”

“No, just art.”

“You should’ve been in the theater program.”

They slide inside. Steve slams the worn ‘5’ and watches with some satisfaction as the doors close on Nurse Linda’s flared nostrils.

Saxophones and trombones drift honey-smooth from the speakers overhead. “In the Mood,” maybe; that’s the only one he knows. He watches the lights begin to tick by and tries hard not to think of dancing.

The fifth-floor hallway is bland, and incredibly sterile—not in the sense that it’s particularly clean, but in the sense that it has absolutely zero personality. Something to do with the cream-colored walls or the mass-produced photographs of New York as seen from a tourist’s point-of-view: the rush of Times Square, the distant grandeur of Lady Liberty, the sturdy beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge. Nothing about the smell of trash or the press of rush hour traffic in the subway.

Steve treads a well-worn path to Peggy’s room, knocking politely just as the vengeful flood of nurses bursts from the stairwell.

“Jesus,” Sam yelps.

“Yes, al _right_!” Peggy calls, voice slightly muffled, and Steve opens the door. He stumbles inside, falling heavily against the wood and grabbing the handle as Sam races for one of the visitor chairs. “Good lord, Samuel, is that you—?”

“Hi, ma’am!”

Nurse Linda, with the strength of a thousand men, tries to bash through. Steve’s flung forward, almost losing his grip on Marvel; he slams back just as Sam manages to lodge the seat under the knob, and then he’s fast-walking down the abbreviated hallway to a chorus of banging fists.

“Mr. Rogers,” Peggy says dryly. She swings her bare feet over the side of the bed and bends carefully down to reach into the depths of her nightstand.

“Agent Carter,” Steve pants, trying to catch his breath. “Sorry to—barge in like this.”

“Nonsense.” When she straightens, she’s holding a truncated gun with easy familiarity, small and clever in her hand. “Who’s on your tail?”

Sam grins. “The entire nursing staff.”

“Perfect. I shall finally be able to shoot Linda.”

“Peggy, no,” Steve says, a little desperately as he sends a meaningful glare in Sam’s direction. His friend shrugs.

“Fine.” Still, Peggy doesn’t let go of her PPK. “But something else is the matter, you’re in quite a state.”

“WE ARE CALLING THE POLICE!” Nurse Linda shouts. “YOU ARE TRESPASSING AND ENDANGERING THE LIVES OF OUR RESIDENTS—”

“Can I use your corkboard, ma’am?” Sam asks, gesturing to the thing that had, at some point between Steve’s last visit and now, been taken off the wall and turned around. Peggy waves an assent, shrewd gaze finding the blocky rectangle Steve is doing his best to hide under his arm.

“Did you bring libations, Mr. Rogers?”

He winces, white-knuckling Marvel. Sam passes with the corkboard, another wedge for the door, and the picture of the redheaded woman with the razorblade glare drifts accusingly to the ground. Steve knows that face.

_Natasha_.

He meets Peggy’s molasses eyes and sets Marvel on the edge of her bed. It’s like the lure of an anglerfish: she follows it automatically, arms still hanging loose at her side. Steve notices that the hand holding her gun doesn’t shake. The other one does, as she brings it to ghost over the lacquered edges of the title.

“I couldn’t keep my promise.”

“It was the game’s fault,” Sam explains. He’s finished the barricade and now moves to stand at the end of Peggy’s bed.

“I imagine it was,” she answers seriously, a without a bit of irony. She takes a deep breath. “Steve, Samuel. You don’t know how glad I am that you’re both alright.” She shakes her head, brief and quickly aborted. “I should never have put either of you in such danger.”

“You can’t beat it alone.” Steve’s mouth quirks. “It’s the law of the jungle.”

“And with all due respect, ma’am,” Sam adds, “the game was never going to stay buried.”

“I suppose not.” She opens the board, staring down at the pieces with an unreadable expression.

“Peggy,” Steve starts gently, pulling her from her reverie. “Do you still have the amulet? The one you got on your free turn?”

She frowns. “The necklace? Of course.” She pulls it out from underneath the high collar of her nightgown, carefully slipping the leather band over her gray-white hair. “It was a piece of the puzzle, I could hardly just throw it away.” She passes it to Steve.

The moment he touches the familiar bronze, the Eye of Agamotto disappears in an emerald flash. He feels it like a heartbeat. _BA-DUM_. Like the very fabric of the universe. When he looks down at his game token, another slot’s been filled: red and purple and green. Reality and Power and Time.

“I take it I was holding a rather important piece.”

“You were holding the Time Stone.”

“Time,” she snorts, holding up her gnarled hand and watching the tremor. “That’s certainly ironic.” Her eyes narrow astutely. “But that can hardly have been your only reason for visiting. You were in a panic—something is after you. I believe it would be in all our best interests for you to tell me what that something is.”

“Someone.” Steve exchanges a glance with Sam and continues, without preamble, “The Red Skull’s escaped.”

“Johan Schmidt is still alive? Good lord, but how?”

“He’s been trapped. All this time he’s been trapped. I think if we can beat the game we can trap him again, but,” Steve stops abruptly. He knows what he’s asking of her, of the woman who spent her life obsessed with this thing, too afraid to revisit it but too afraid to let go. Peggy had never been sucked inside, but in her own way she’d been trapped, too.

“Everyone needs to play,” she finishes for him, mouth wry. Her fingers dance over the red gauntlet. “And my turn has just come up again.”

“Peggy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, if there was any other way—”

“My boy, I started this fight a long time ago.” She picks up the dice. “I do think it’s time that I finished it.”

Sam nods, smiling. “We’re with you, ma’am.”

“As fine a team as the Invaders,” she declares, glancing between them.

“Peggy?”

“Yes, Steve?”

He watches the dice hover near the edge of her palm. “It’s not just the Skull that survived.”

She smiles, then. Bright and genuine. It softens the lines of her face, makes her look younger. Steve thinks of the woman he’d seen crowding around a chrome table somewhere in the Alps: capable and sure.

She rolls.

The dice bounce to a stop against the edge of the board. Steve counts the pips: three on one face, one on the other. The red gauntlet shudders forward and the three of them lean over the jewel.

“‘You’re almost there with much at stake,’” Sam reads. “‘Now the ground begins to quake.’”

“Hold on!” Peggy orders, as the world begins to move.

 

Steve has the foresight to shut the game, but not much else—the building shakes, side to side to side, the glass rattling in Peggy’s window frame and the pills pouring off her nightstand. Plaster begins to crumble from the popcorned ceiling. He hears the nurses screaming outside, and the groaning complaint of the brick-faced building, and thinks _movemovemove_ but his feet remain rooted to the spot—

With a noise like breaking bone, the floor begins to crack. Right under Peggy’s still-humming hospital bed, a jagged line that races from wall to wall, exposing pipes and splitting supports—Shady Acres, pulled apart like taffy. 

“To the walls, boys!” she barks, and Steve tackles Sam towards the window just as the fissure grows. It swallows Peggy’s nightstand and tips her bed. When he stands, fighting for balance, he finds himself staring at her from the other side of a growing canyon.

“The game!” Sam shouts, as Marvel slides down Peggy’s old knit blanket towards the yawning gap. Steve can make out glimpses of the floors below, tipped medical equipment and tipped people and a long drop to the hard ground, but—

“I can’t reach!” He inches towards the edge. “It’s too—Peggy, no, don’t!”

She ignores him, stepping resolutely towards the teetering bed, getting her free hand around Marvel just as the crack widens and—

“ _NO!”_

—she falls.

 

The ground stops shaking.

Steve’s heartbeat is loud in his ears: _BA-DUM, BA-DUM, BA-DUM._ The other half of Peggy’s shoebox room is horribly empty, and he’s having a hard time breathing. Not because of asthma. Just because he can’t remember how. He turns to Sam. His friend looks just as shell-shocked; when Steve opens his mouth, no sound comes out.

Then: a jet engine.

Something red and gold bursts through the crevice, kicking hot air in its wake. The building shakes one last time when it lands heavily on their side of the gap.

“Did someone order a rescue?” Tony Stark asks, voice digitized through the flat faceplate of his suit: an older and bulkier model, simpler than the one he’d been wearing in Marvel. “A cheap trick and a cheesy one-liner? Aunt Peg, did no one ever tell you falling five stories is bad for your health?’

He sets her down, one gauntleted arm cradling her elbow. Her hair is wind-tossed; she’s still holding her PPK in one hand and Marvel in the other.

“We get everyone?” Stark asks.

“All civilians have been rescued,” a polite, distinctly upper crust British voice confirms. “The structural integrity of the building is holding at seventy-five percent.”

“Should be good enough for rescue crews—call the NYPD, the FDNY, the CIA, the FBI. IHOP.” 

“Actually, sir, it appears to be IHOB now.”

“You leave town for a couple of years and they change everything.”

“Is that—?” Sam asks, eyes narrowing.

“Tony Stark?” Steve nods. “Yeah.”

“I gotta call Virginia.”

“Ms. Potts has already been made aware of the situation,” Tony says, the hydraulics of his suit hissing as he looks up, “seeing as I had to hijack the Mark I hanging in my lab. She took it rather well, I think. Except for the part where she wouldn’t stop _throwing_ things at me—who are you, exactly?”

Sam crosses his arms. “She helped us out. I’m just trying to return the favor.”

“Great. How about you, Lollipop Guild?”

Steve frowns. “Tony, it’s me.”

“Hello, me. I’m Dad. Actually, scratch that, bad joke, I really don’t want to be Dad—”

“Captain America.”

“— _Cap_?” There’s a long, awkward pause. Then: “You look shorter in real life.”

Steve presses his lips together.

“Anthony,” Peggy breathes, letting go of Marvel. It drops flat near her feet. She reaches up to set shaking fingers against Stark’s faceplate. “Is that really you?”

“In the flesh, Aunt Peg. Well—metaphorically speaking.” He gently tugs her hand away, sliding up the gold mask to reveal an empty suit. A gold jewel floats in the middle of its mechanical components, yellow tendrils pulsing into the circuitry.

The Mind Stone.

“I’m still technically,” he kicks Marvel, one-two, “in Nueva York. But turns out it’s easy for the Stones to cross into other realities once one of them’s made the leap—you know, they _want_ to be together. So I sent the Mind Stone back to Earth and used it to hack into my old suit. Bit of remote piloting.”

“What about Vision?” Steve asks.

“I downloaded him into my mainframe. Say hi, Vision.”

“Hello, Ms. Carter,” the posh voice declares. “Hello, sirs.”

“Anyway, Bill and Ted here really kicked the hornet’s nest when they made their great escape. I figured you guys could use the help.”

“Thanks for coming, Tony,” Steve says.

“Thought I’d try to be a good man for a bit. See how it fit.”

“And we wouldn’t say no to some muscle,” Sam adds.

“Glad I mail ordered that blow-up muscle kit from the _Captain Marvel_ annual. Who do you need me to blast?”

“No one just yet.” Peggy gestures to Marvel. “I’ve finished my turn. Howard is next.”

“Hate to break it to you, Aunt Peg, but Dad is very, very dead—”

“Yet his token is still on the board.” She fixes Stark in an unyielding stare. “I think you should try rolling for him.”

Tony looks down at the game by his feet. In the silence, the building settles. Sirens wail below. After several heartbeats ( _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba—_ ), he says, “Fine. But just so we’re clear, I’m not doing this for Howard.”

“I never dreamed that you were.”

“And just so we’re also clear, this would not be my choice for a final showdown venue.”

“You got someplace in mind?” Sam asks.

Stark tilts his head. “Well, actually…”

 

 


	26. twenty-four/

“It’s perfect, right? I’m not a real estate agent, but I probably should be.”

“It’s too close to Jersey.”

“Cap, Orangetown is not in New Jersey. Never did figure out why Dad bought a hangar out here—probably got the land cheap. Used to be a military base. Camp Shanks or something.”

Steve glances out the open warehouse doors, at the road winding its lonely way through a blanket of winter trees. The world is brown and red, shadows pulled long by the setting sun. The breeze shivers inside, kicking up dirt and irritating his lungs.

“Ok, but,” Sam lifts one of the dust covers, “this stuff? A million dollars, easy.”

“Makes it even more cathartic if it gets destroyed.”

“Man, you have issues.”

“That’s what my therapist used to tell me.”

Howard Stark’s warehouse has been preserved in dust-covered amber: a large, echoing space with sliding turquoise walls and grimy tinted windows. The visible supports are rusting overhead and the STARK INDUSTRIES logo painted in the center of the linoleum floor has faded. Tony casually blows it to bits. Peggy shoots him a look.

“You may not have gotten along with your father, but that is no reason to act like a child.”

He crosses his arms sheepishly. It looks odd in his suit. “Sorry.”

She nods briskly.

Lumpy, ghost-like shapes take up the rest of the space: cloth-covered machines from the 30s and 40s in various states of disrepair, showcased by flat tires and broken wings and chipped paint. Steve can pick out a few by name—two Cadillacs, a convertible Chevrolet, at least three WW2-era aircraft (P-39, P-47, A-26). Steve doesn’t feel like potentially destroying history, but he also can’t think of someplace better—the warehouse is far enough removed from the city that the only people in immediate danger should be themselves.

“You know, the last time I played this game, I got my girlfriend attacked by giant spiders.”

“Second thoughts, Stark?” Sam asks, sliding Marvel across the floor. It pops open in front of Tony’s boots.

“Not exactly. Third thoughts. Maybe fourth.”

“Tony,” Peggy says, bare feet silent as she pads towards him. She puts a shaking hand on his arm; the other still holds her Walther. “This thing has controlled our lives for far too long.”

“Yeah,” Tony sighs. “Yeah, I know.”

He reaches down and attempts to pick up the dice. His fingers are too bulky. It takes three or four tries.

“Look,” he heaves when he’s finally got them, “look, whatever happens—”

“Sir.”

“—not now, Vision, I’m about to be really heroic—”

“Sir, I really must insist—”

“— _ahem_ , whatever happens, just know that I, your fearless leader—”

Sam makes a face and Steve rolls his eyes.

“—do hereby declare that—”

“Sir, there is an incoming energy signature.”

“Vision, please don’t interrupt me for anything less than a nuke.”

“It’s an Infinity Stone.”

“—or that,” Tony squeaks, whirling on Steve. “You left one lying around?!”

The air bends and breaks, a mirror refracting the lumpy shapes and turquoise walls, _cracking_ to a narrow point on the other side of the hangar. A waxy hand surfaces between the folds.

Johann Schmidt dusts himself off. “I must say, the sorcerer did a good job hiding your scent!”

“The Red Skull?” Tony holds out his arm. “Really?”

“For being an ordinary man, Captain America, you certainly have extraordinary friends! The others you sent to distract me, however, were—less impressive.”

Steve’s hear stutter-steps in his chest. “What did you do to them?”

“I sent them to the Dark Dimension. It is a place I studied extensively under the tutelage of the Führer.” The Skull’s lipless mouth stretches wide. “It is not a pleasant place.”

Tony snorts. “Who would’ve guessed that?”

“Stark.” The Skull clasps his hands behind his back. “You are a long way from your precious tower and your pretty tricks. What good can you hope to accomplish here?”

“Well, kill you, for starters,” Tony quips, and raises his hand. The dice clatter onto the gameboard.

“Tony, _wait_ —”

A high whine precedes Stark’s energy beam as it leaps towards the Skull. Schmidt doesn’t move but the air in front of him does—a smoking ripple that reflects the blast straight into Peggy’s gut.

The dice spin.

She looks down at the red inkblot spreading across her stomach.

“ _NO!”_ Tony shouts, jumping to catch her before she falls. Her hands flutter over the warm wetness, her breath bubbles up her throat.

The dice stop.

On the board, the golden gauntlet slides forward eight spaces.

In the abbreviated space of its journey, Steve watches the world twirl out of control: it’s his heartbeat ( _badumbadumbadumbadum_ ) and the Red Skull’s calculated gaze and the way Peggy is bleeding out but hasn’t let go of her gun—it’s the glint of afternoon sun coming through the open hangar doors and hitting the back of Tony’s helmet—it’s Sam, steady Sam, saying something to him, saying _words_ —

The clue.

Steve looks down.

_Its gaze is far. It likes the chase. Your party better move post haste._

Something blots out the sun behind them. 

Its shadow stretches into the warehouse, almost-but-not-quite reaching the Red Skull’s rigid form. Steve turns, apprehension clawing through his gut.

There, standing in the threshold, is a suit of armor.

It’s nine, maybe ten feet tall, polished to a silver gleam. The humanoid shape of it, two arms and two legs crafted from interwoven metal musculature, feels all the more _wrong_ for the spikes running across its shoulders, the slats covering its face. It drags its gaze over the Skull; pauses on Sam and Steve; and finally settles on—

“Tony!” Steve shouts, as armor’s mask retracts _onetwothreefour_ to reveal the horrible, empty truth of its insides—

Nothing. Blackness. And then—

The bang.

“Ah, the Destroyer. A relic of the great Asgardian warriors, and the most fearsome hunter in all of Marvel.” The Skull smiles beatifically. “I would run, if I were you.”

Tony grabs Peggy beneath the knees and behind the shoulders, shooting to the opposite end of the warehouse just as the Destroyer’s supernova obliterates the vaguely plane-shaped ghost they’d been crouched under. Fire catches old fuel and the whole thing goes up, a belch of flame towards the ceiling. Steve shields his eyes.

The Destroyer turns, readying another shot.

“Tony, get out of here, go!”

“God _dammit_!” Tony yells, leaping into the air. “Come on, Hulk Hogan, let’s you and me take this outside—” He misses the Destroyer’s glowing-ember esophagus by inches as he shoots into the winter twilight. The alien armor wrenches its head to follow Tony’s path and then rearranges its body until it faces the hangar doors.

It flies off after Stark.

“Sam,” Steve breathes, “get to Peggy.”

“We’re sitting ducks here, Steve, we need to regroup—”

The air shatters. Schmidt appears at Steve’s shoulder.

Steve barely has enough time to grit his teeth before the Skull’s fist connects with his cheekbone. He flies towards the back of the hangar, skidding past the burning wreckage.

“Steve!”

“I commend your persistence!” the Skull says, footsteps measured as he approaches. Behind him, Sam slides Marvel towards Peggy’s prone form and then slowly gets to his feet. Steve watches him step: heel-roll-toe. Heel-roll-toe. Quiet, quiet, quiet—

“Clearly you have made some headway with the Stones.”

Steve spits, blood and bile. The fire brightens the rotting skin of the Skull’s face, highlights the crusted blood under the ruin of his nose. “You can’t take them.” Steve lets his head roll back and forth on his neck, giving Sam time to pull a pocket knife. “You can’t take the pieces off the board. We’ve tried.”

“Indeed, it appears as if Marvel has decided the Stones are rightfully yours. But I wonder—does that loyalty still stand if you are dead?”

Steve gets slowly to his feet and raises his fists.

“You just do not know when to quit, do you?”

“I could do this all day.”

The Skull’s mouth twitches as he comes in for a punch. Steve spent years studying back alley brawls; he knows when to dodge. He knows how to use his smaller frame to his advantage, dancing around his opponent. He knows how to Jab.

None of those things compare to Captain America, but they’re all he’s got.

Well, that and Sam.

Sam, who drives his knife into the Skull’s neck.

It’s a little low—more the junction of his shoulder, left of his spine—but it gives Steve the opening he needs to drive his foot into the Skull’s knee and then his knee into the Skull’s crotch. Dirty fighting. Peggy used to call it something else— _opportunistic_ , she would say, couching him through scenarios from her spot in her hospital bed. _Use what you have to your advantage, Steven, and always, always know your opponent’s move before they do_ —

“Watch—” Steve inhales, but too late: the Skull rips the knife from his back, turning to throw it and Sam twenty feet with the blue-tinged force of the Space Stone. Steve’s too busy watching Sam roll painfully across the linoleum to notice the kick circling towards his chin until—

Someone catches it.

Steve sucks in a breath.

An arm, mica jointed gold, throws the Skull foot over head into the burning wreck.

Bucky turns.

Steve exhales, something slotting into place. The world is going to shit around them and all he can really do is stare—but that’s ok, because Bucky is staring back, lit by chaos and utterly, utterly real—

Unless Bucky’s only staring because he _doesn’t know who Steve is_ , which—

“There you are, Steve,” Bucky breathes, mouth quirking. Steve drops his fists.

“You son of a bitch. I thought—”

“Was it a five or an eight?”

“What?”

“‘In the jungle you must wait, until the dice read five or eight.’”

“Eight.”

“Who rolled it?”

“Stark.”

“Don’t tell him I’m grateful.”

“I would never.”

“You should’ve left it alone,” Bucky whispers. They’re separated by inches. Steve can smell him, sweat and gunpowder. Bucky reaches down, almost shyly, to brush Steve’s bangs away from his forehead. They fall stubbornly back into place.

“Steve!” Sam shouts. “Get your ass over here!”

Steve blinks back to the present, stepping away. “Peggy’s hurt,” he explains off Bucky’s wordless question, panic and guilt bubbling up his throat as he sprints to the other side of the hangar.

 

 


	27. twenty-five/

Peggy never gets shot.

It’s something of a point of pride—twelve undercover ops, plus her time in the Invaders, plus that one fruitful liberation of a German-occupied whorehouse, and she’s never once been nicked. There’s certainly none of Howard’s cocky bravado in her mien when she says it: just truth. A fact, plain and simple. She’s the best. She _has_ to be the best. There are men everywhere who would love to prove otherwise.

It’s why this gut wound is so _bloody_ annoying.

They’re in a warehouse. One of Howard’s hangars, only everything’s been covered. She’s certainly found herself in worse scrapes than this, but experience tells her that waking up with no memory of how one got where one got is never good. Not to mention common sense. She can’t think of a single bloody good reason for their taking a trans-Atlantic flight in the middle of the bloody war, though.

There’s a young man by her elbow. For a moment, she thinks he’s Gabe, and for some reason this makes her heart seize in her chest—but no, there’s a gap between his front teeth. Must be one of Dugan’s new boys. A familiar face slips to a stop by her feet—her _bare_ feet. What the hell kind of op had this been, before it went south?

The new boy is probably shorter than Peggy. He certainly looks it. Probably lied on his enlistment form. There is not a fight for children.

(No, it’s a fight _full_ of children; the Children’s Crusade, they’re calling it. Full of good ol’ boys buried in good ol’ foxholes.)

Steve Rogers. That’s his name. The—

(Sharon’s friend.)

—SSR training program. Must be from Camp Lehigh. She spent some time there before shipping back to England, training recruits for a mysterious program whose mysterious doctor had mysteriously died.

Maybe they’re overseas. Howard had hangars near London, and one in France. It would certainly explain why James is here. James wouldn’t leave the front if President Eisenhower gave him a personal invitation. Nor even for a sprawling mansion in San Simeon and a cush gig selling bonds. Peggy is fairly certain he’d been born with a rifle in his hand, or at the very least a set of bronze knuckles. She knows he’d brawled his way through much of New York before coming to Europe. Either way, his currency is loyalty, and there’s no one in the world James is more loyal to than the Invaders. Only an act of God could rip him away.

(It did. It did.)

His hair is positively medieval, and he’s sporting a week’s worth of scruff. He’s always so immaculate, even in the trenches, that she knows that the mission must be horribly buggered.

Lord, but her stomach is killing her. Almost as bad as the time she’d been pushed off a ledge by an aging moving star in Los Angeles. Impaled on some steel reinforcement. She’d bled all over poor Gabe’s rug.

(This had been before Gabe had left. It had been a quiet leaving: no fits of rage, no throwing of clothes. It’d happened over a morning cup of tea.)

But it’s wartime. She hadn’t gone to Los Angeles until—until ’47. It was—

James kneels next to her, checking her pulse with clinical precision. The hand holding her wrist is too smooth and too cold. It must be a mistake. He peels back the ruin of her nightgown to reveal the sizeable tear through her stomach and whistles. “Jesus, Carter.”

“Where the bloody hell is Jim?” she snaps. “He’s got more experience stitching than you do.”

For some reason, this makes James exchange a glance with Private Rogers. Peggy is not a stupid woman, nor is she entirely blind to James’ proclivities. There is a lot behind that glance. Private Rogers says softly, “She has good days and bad days.”

“ _She_ is right here, Private,” Peggy snaps, more out of a nameless, senseless fear than any real annoyance. God, but her _stomach_ —

She refuses to die here, even though dying in one of Howard’s private hangars would certainly cause a scandal, and the thought of causing Howard a scandal is appealing.

“You look like shit,” she informs James. “Have you lost your pomade?”

“Carter, I ain’t the one with a three-inch hole in my gut.”

Her lips quiver. She can’t say why. Can’t say what possesses her to whisper, “It’s been so long,” and shake her head, either. “So long.” She shuts her eyes and breathes, trying to ground herself.

(She hasn’t seen James Buchanan Barnes in seventy-three years, except in his picture, that old black-and-white she’d taken on one of London’s rare sunny days. They’d been in an airfield outside the city practicing jumps.

She’d always felt in him a kindred spirit. They were one and the same.

Peggy had been born holding a rifle, too.)

“I’m here now,” he tells her.

She looks at Private Rogers. “I don’t think you are.”

“Steve,” Dugan’s man warms.

(Samuel. Sam Wilson. Steve’s friend. Incredibly, indescribably patient; incredibly, indescribably bad at poker. Peggy had conned him out of nearly a hundred dollars the last time he’d stopped by.)

Private Wilson gestures with a small, pear-shaped knife towards the fiery wreckage across from them. A Corsair, by the looks of it—though that doesn’t make sense. Corsairs were Marine fighters; their primary theater was the Pacific. How did Howard get one all the way to Europe in the middle of the war?

More importantly: how had it gotten shot down _inside_ a hangar?

Perhaps most importantly: who is that shadowy figure rising from its flames?

The fire clings to the man’s uniform as he staggers towards them, puttering out in fits and spurts. Peggy exhales, grip tightening on her Walther PPK. Her other hand is shaking. She can’t say why. Her hand never shakes.

(Her hand _always_ shakes.)

The last time she’d been this close to the Red Skull, she’d been posing as a maid in Castle Kaufmann, and she’d rather mucked it up. Her objective had died in transit. Colonel Phillips had nearly stripped her of her uniform.

And now the only Super Soldier left in the world is the one walking towards them.

“Sergeant Barnes, why am I not surprised? You have been playing this game almost as long as I have. Survival must be second nature to you.”

“Bucky, it’s your turn,” Private Rogers says, too low for the Skull to hear. “We could really use a distraction.”

James glances across her bright red stomach to the board game near her foot. She can hear it, persistent:

_—ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba—_

“Steve,” James exhales, hesitating. Peggy has never known him to hesitate. The man is a sniper, and the damn finest one in the army, too—he can’t afford hesitation. Hesitation costs him a bullet, and his target, and potentially the life of an ally.

“I won’t let you disappear again,” Rogers says fiercely. “I _won’t_.”

James’ lip tips. “Much as I appreciate the sentiment, the game’s not just gonna listen to you.”

_—ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba—_

(Please don’t roll. Please.)

“Well, try not to take too long with your existential crisis,” Private Wilson says, and then gets to his feet, brandishing the knife. Private Rogers, running quick, nimble fingers under James’ chin, follows.

Peggy watches the two of them jog to meet the Red Skull in the middle of the hangar. Her sightline’s good, the adrenaline from her wound making her head pound clear: Wilson has the better form and is clearly adept with his knife. He gets the Skull across the cheek.

Steve is less trained. The style of his fighting is intimately familiar to Peggy, who had perfected it sometime in—

(1946. Trying to clear Howard’s name. She could brawl with the best of them: a stapler to the face, a scarf, pretty smile dipped in Howard’s special brand of poison.)

—intimately familiar. The style, it’s rough and persistent. It’s about never letting an opponent gain the upper hand. Anticipation.  

There’s only so far that can go, though, when you’re fighting an opponent with super strength. And Peggy has seen the Skull demolish men with a single punch on more than one occasion. He’s holding back. He’s _playing_ with them.

Time seems to slow.

“They don’t stand a chance, James.”

“What, and I do?” He presses the heel of his palm to his forehead, eyes trained on the board game. Like an inevitability, his gaze keeps getting drawn back to Private Rogers.

“The hardest part of being a soldier is having the courage to get out of the foxhole.” She struggles up, breath whistling past her teeth. “I have never known you to lack courage, James. What about this mission has you so spooked?”

He looks at her. He likes to think he hides his emotions well, but she can read them like a book: written in his glassy eyes, in the slight press of his lips.

(James never hid anything well, no matter how hard he tried. If he liked you, you knew it within minutes; if he disliked you, within seconds. And there had always been that moment when the bullets had started whistling that his eyes would go wide—half-a-second. He’d allow himself half-a-second of fear before squaring his shoulders and ordering the men to take cover. His hand wouldn’t shake on the trigger.)

Peggy winces. Her gut throbs. She tries to stay as still as she can, but the pain is reaching that threshold where she doesn’t know if her body is going to allow her to keep going. Just like ’47. Or ’46. ’45, ’44, ’43—

Bucky reaches across her (too bony) knees to pull the gameboard close. He picks up the dice in his (metal) hand and glances across his nose.

“Hey, Carter.”

“James.”

“It’s easier to get out of the foxhole if you trust the guy sitting next to you.”

“And do you?”

He looks at Private Rogers, and then across his nose at her. “Always have.” 

He rolls. Peggy can barely read the dice when they stop moving, the world blurring in and out of focus—one minute Howard’s hangar in upstate New York, the next a hidden Hydra base in the Alps. She goes forwards and backwards without regard: sees Gabe leaving. James disappearing. Sharon pulling a chair close to her hospital bed. Happy Hogan delivering a box of Howard’s things. Castle Kaufmann and Abraham Erskine. His hopeful face. The way it had looked, not at all shocked but resigned, when a bullet had entered near his heart—

The silver gauntlet slides forward _one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine_ spaces. Peggy listens to its heartbeat:

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

She blinks. And blinks. And blinks again. James’ clever hand is cradling the side of her head, readjusting her lean against a white-rimmed tire covered by dust and cloth. She hadn’t bungled an op this bad since Castle Kaufmann—

“Stay alive, Peggy.”

“Pot meet kettle, James.”

He kisses her swiftly on the lips and jumps into the fray, taking out the Red Skull at the ankles and catching the knife Private Wilson throws his way. Peggy’s head rolls, tilting towards the board game, and the writing that’s suddenly appeared, like magic, across the jewel in its center—

_Beware the ground on which you stand, the floor is quicker than the sand._

 

 


	28. twenty-six/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: the Red Skull pulls a very Bellatrix Lestrange move on Steve; brief but unpleasant 

The air smells different here. Even the stench of gasoline—it’s brighter. Less of a captured memory. It takes him back to the war, before he got picked up by the SSR. His days as a non-com in the 107th, buried deep in his own grave and listening to the Kraut missiles whistle overhead.

Common belief was you couldn’t hear the bullet coming. A lot of the guys who got hurt, sometime between being patched up by a doctor and taken off the line, would say the same thing: I didn’t hear it coming. I didn’t see it.

Bucky, from experience, knows you hear the bullet. It’s a singular noise. Peculiar. He developed a sixth-sense for it later in the war—could pick out a sniper at 100 yards by the crack of a twig underfoot.

Rogers, though—there’s a bullet he didn’t hear.

Bucky presses his hands flat against the shiny floor, watching the bloody, gummy with spit, drip slowly from his mouth. Sam is a heap by the burning Corsair, unconscious except for the way his fingers twitch, the way his chest rises unevenly. Steve is less lucky—pinned to the middle of the floor over the ruin of the STARK INDUSTRIES logo by Sam’s knife. The Skull had struck it straight through one of Steve’s artist hands. Pinned like a butterfly. He brings his boot to bear against Steve’s exposed neck.

The thing they don’t tell you about war is that your own pain is bearable. Bucky had lost him arm; during the winter of ’44, he’d fallen off a train and survived at the bottom of a ravine in the Alps for two days until Dugan and Carter had fished him out; he’d been shot, flayed, burned, and punched. He’d been tortured until his blood ran like fire and the only thing he could remember was his serial number. Before Europe, he’d come home with two black eyes and a broken nose after some guys from the docks found him in an alleyway.

Your own pain is bearable; the pain of your comrades, your sisters, your lovers, is not. Bucky would gladly live all those horrors again if it meant Peggy would stop bleeding out, if it meant that the Skull would _stop_ —

Steve makes a noise. A small noise. Scrabbling for air. Bucky feels it like a bullet. The blood drips between his lips and onto the floor. He catalogs and compartmentalizes: a broken arm, at least three broken ribs. A sprained ankle. The pain in his head.

“There will be no room in my new world for idealists, Captain America. Only the truth of extraordinary men.”

Steve’s free hand beats weakly against the Skull’s shiny boot.

“More importantly, we will not view Marvel as humanity’s executioner, but as its liberator.”

The neck is the hidden vulnerability of most men: Bucky had seen one too many good soldiers bleed out from a shot that grazed the jugular. Some of them drowned before that could even happen. Or like this: choked slowly. A power play.

Sam’s hand moves, just. A jagged piece of the Corsair’s hull rests by his fingers.

Bucky breathes.

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

“Hail Hydra,” the Skull says, and presses.

Bucky shoots to his feet, catching the makeshift shiv Sam throws and slashing the still-hot edge down the Skull’s face in one smooth motion, catching temple and eye and the bridge of his nose. Schmidt howls, stumbling back as his hands grope his face; Bucky turns, and drops. He rips the knife from Steve’s hand and tosses it away. He cradles Steve’s face in his hands.

“You’re ok,” he says, wondering who he’s reassuring, “you’re ok—”

Steve heaves. The sound is horrible: a death rattle. He can’t catch his breath. Bucky puts a steadying hand on his chest.

“In, two, three, four; out, two, three, four—you’re ok,” he repeats. “C’mon, Steve, you’re ok—”

Steve shuts his eyes and nods. Bucky presses their foreheads together. He wants—

He wants to—

He just—

Carter’s lying on the floor, bleeding out and convinced it’s 1945. She’s got little valleys carved in frown lines near her mouth, and her hair is gray. Gabe, and Jim, and Dugan, and Monty, and Dernier; Ruth, and Alice, and Rebecca—they’re all probably buried somewhere. A war memorial or a pauper’s grave. And the Red Skull, scum of the earth, is still walking around wasting precious air.

_Still_ threatening the people Bucky loves.

“Bucky,” Steve manages, voice as hoarse as an Army Jeep.

“I got you.”

“I know.” Steve opens his eyes, mouth quirking. “‘Til the end of the line.”

Bucky almost laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“I should have known after Kreischberg,” the Skull pants, staggering upright. “I should have known then, Sergeant Barnes, that we would be tied together through fate and fire. Two sides of a coin.”

Bucky licks his lips, turning to watch over his shoulder as Schmidt materializes the Stone in hand. The cube puckers the air, glowing like a street sign. He steps forward and his foot sinks three feet into the linoleum.

The Skull frowns. “What is this?”

Bucky feels it, then: the tacky earth. Sticky, like pomade or paste. His knees dropping through the quicksand floor. He shoves Steve away and cranes his neck to smile toothily at the man behind him. 

“I rolled.”

“A neat diversion, were I not holding the Space—”

“Heads up!” Stark shouts, cresting the hill outside the hangar. The red-and-gold of his suit is scuffed, dinged pretty bad, like Dugan had taken it on a spin through Nazi-occupied Germany on a night op. The Destroyer Bucky had seen tangentially—in the wreck of the Corsair, mostly—is on his heels.

Stark blasts into the warehouse, faceplate rising. There’s nothing inside his suit except the telltale yellow pulse of the Mind Stone, which he grabs in one bulky hand and pulls stringily from the space of his helmet.

“Cap!”

Steve catches it, and the world takes a breath. Bucky feels it: like a sigh. Stark’s armor begins to fall apart, but not before momentum has carried it to the Skull. Clunky, ostentatious debris rains over Schmidt—an empty helmet, a limp gauntlet, a dead chest piece—and the Destroyer zeroes in.

The Skull, one foot still stuck fast, rips open a portal. Bucky’s got just enough time to feel a tinge of knife-sharp recognition at the edge of the Empire State building before the Destroyer flies through, disappearing into the heart of New York City. The wavering, smoky air closes behind it.

“You think I can be beat with a few bits of clever strategy? I can open doorways to the cosmos! And now, you are without your most powerful al—”

_BANG._

The Skull looks down. He frowns, pressing a finger to the space over his heart hidden by the blackness of his uniform. When he pulls away, blood coats the pad of his thumb.

Across the hangar, Peggy lowers her gun.

Bucky exhales. He meets her eyes. It’s like one of those questions they’d ask in school: _how many bullets does it take to stop a Super Soldier?_

One. Just one.

The Skull falls awkwardly. The cube bounces out of his hand. Each time the hollow glass hits the linoleum, one piece of Howard’s precious collection careens across the warehouse, popping into existence several feet to the left and up. _Crash, crash, crash—_

Sam scrambles forward, grabbing the Stone and overhanding it in one smooth motion. Steve fields it. The cube disappears in a fizzle blue-white light, the force of it brushing past Bucky’s face like a sigh.

Bucky, hips deep and sinking fast.

Steve slides forward with a wince, one hand braced on the shore of still-hard ground and the other blindly searching for Bucky’s in the mire.

Chest deep. Jesus, but this quicksand’s actually quick.

Steve’s panting now. Can’t seem to catch his breath. His hand, the one spread flat next to him, leaks blood in the shape of a palmprint. Bucky feels the honey-like ripple of the floor against the underside of his chin.

The last thing he sees before he disappears is the vista from the top of the hill: the trees spilling in a winter wash towards the flat, low suburbs, the sky stretching in all directions outside the hangar. Steve Rogers. The thin point of his chin; his chapped lips; his too-wide eyes. The hair that curls across his forehead.

“Better than the view from the top of the hill,” Bucky says.

The ground slipping over his head steals Steve’s reply.

 

Private Wilson makes it all the way back round to her after the fighting’s stopped. He even takes her hand, though it’s bird-bone thin and shakes something awful. Peggy tries to convey her gratitude by finally letting go of her gun. She isn’t full of peace, but a grim sort of satisfaction.

“That was some shot, ma’am.”

Peggy smiles.

Then she finally, finally, closes her eyes.

 

 

Sam watches her last stuttering breath like a slow cut to a mooring line. Steve’s labored rescue attempts provide a universally horrible backing track in the echo of the hangar.

Natasha. T’Challa. Shuri. Stark. Peggy Carter and Bucky Barnes.

He wonders how the hell they’re going to pick themselves back up from this one.

 

 

 

Steve, arm-deep in the oatmeal molasses mixture the floor had become, catches something between his fingers. Sensation is fleeting, but it must be Bucky’s hand—Steve grabs instinctively, arm shaking with the effort, and the pain around his throat, and the blood curling from his hand. 

He plants his feet like a tree and _pulls_.

When he falls backwards, the only thing he’s holding is the Soul Stone. On the gameboard, the blue gauntlet inches towards the center of the green jewel.

Steve closes his eyes. 

 

 

 

 

“Marvel.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	29. twenty-seven/

**(1945)**

“Fine, fine. I was just letting you—”

“ _NO!”_ Bucky and Carter shout in unison, watching the dice list precariously in Howard’s hands.

“Well, don’t get your panties in a twist!” he frowns, setting them down _one-two_ on the board. “Why the sudden change of heart, huh?”

“Call it a woman’s intuition,” Peggy manages, as Bucky stares at the menacing, industrial machines, the spotlights, the loops of thick wire, the map of the world pinned through at Berlin, at London, at New York. He spreads his fingers on the chrome table; the high altitude and brittle air make his knuckles split. He watches the small, dried cuts on his left hand.

“You just want to quit while you’re ahead,” Howard mutters sourly, smoothing his mustache and scratching under the strap of his bug-eyed goggles. He’s as bright and smarmy as Bucky remembers. It’s almost too much. “Fine, alright. I’ll take it back to the SSR and do some tests in a controlled environment—”

“You’ll do no such thing. You’ll strap this to your strongest rocket and shoot it into space.”

Howard frowns. “ _Huh_?”

“Immediately.”

“Peg, you’re not making any sense.”

“What part of that sentence was hard to understand, Howard?”

“Uh, the part in which I spend millions of government dollars sending Monopoly into space.” He pauses, considering. “Actually, spending millions of government dollars to send Monopoly into space sounds like a good time—”

Peggy pinches the bridge of her nose. “This is hardly Monopoly.”

“Howard,” Bucky says, stepping around the table to crowd into Stark’s space and grip the back of his neck like the Italians used to do back home, smacking a loud kiss on his lips. “Do as Peggy says.”

Howard blinks the shock off his face and replaces it with something lewd. “Can you run that by me again?”

“No.”

“Jesus, give a guy a heart attack—what the hell’s gotten into you, huh?”

Bucky steps back, grinning. “Just missed you, I guess.”

“Well, you can miss me anytime you want, pal, s’just that you been right here this whole goddamn time—”

“Howard,” Peggy warns.

“HQ, rocket, space. Got it.” Stark picks up Marvel, shoving it under one arm. “But how’s about you let me take a look at that necklace it gave you—” He catches Peggy’s look, starting quickly for the door. “—never mind.”

“Hey, Stark!” Bucky raps his knuckles against the tabletop. “Do me a favor?”

“For your, Barnes? Anything.”

In December 1991, Howard and Maria Stark die in a car crash. In January 1945, Bucky says, “Hire a driver.”

Howard laughs. “You know, I got just the guy. Helped his wife get out of Poland, he’s looking for a job in the states when this is all over.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Don’t it just?”

The door clicks shut behind him.

Bucky turns to Peggy. She brushes down her leather jacket.

“I’ll let Gabe know,” she says briskly. “He’ll keep Stark on track. We can’t afford any mishaps. Not with Marvel. Not with this.”

“Sure.” Bucky rubs the fabric of his jacket absentmindedly. Thick and scratchy. Not at all soft, but warm. “Carter, is this a second chance?”

She looks around. “I would imagine so.” 

“Huh.” He scrubs a hand under his nose. “Does that mean—” His thought hiccups, distracted by the sense memory of Steve’s hands in his hair. “Does that mean none of it ever happened?”

Peggy voice is remarkably steady and her eyes remarkably clear as she says, “Of course it happened.” She walks around the table, rising up on her toes to circle her sturdy arms around his neck. “Of course.”

“It wasn’t so bad, at the end,” is all he manages, before he buries his face in her shoulder.

“My darling,” she sighs, leaning back to press one hand against his cheek. He feels the butterfly touch of her fingers under his eye. “You have been fighting for so long. It would be cruel of me to ask you to keep doing so.”

He frowns. “Peggy, what’re you—”

“I saw how you looked at Steve Rogers.”

Bucky shakes his head. “It wasn’t love.”

“Wasn’t it?”

He feels a furrow forming between his eyebrows, an old friend come to visit. “I don’t know. I think it coulda been. Maybe. If we’d had more—”

She produces the eye-shaped amulet in the electric space between them. Bucky swallows.

“My free turn,” she finally explains, unnecessarily. “Are you up for one more adventure, James?”  

Bucky thinks of his sisters, waiting for news of him; he thinks of the final sprint towards the war’s end.

His legs are tired.

Bucky exhales. “He won’t remember me.”

“Perhaps he will. Perhaps he won’t. But if you stay,” she glances up at him, “the only thing for you here is war.” She says, with absolute certainty, “There will be other wars.”

Bucky’s hand twitches. “But you. And Howard—the guys. My _sisters_ —”

Her smile is soft and understanding. “I never said the choice would be easy.” She backs away, setting the amulet on the table with a soft _click_. “And I’m afraid only you can make it.”

She walks back towards him; leans up to kiss his cheek. It feels like an ember. Like possibility, and hope. She heads for the door. Pauses.

“James.”

He traces her familiar profile, free of frown lines and wrinkles.

“Do not be afraid to rely on others to finish this fight.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She turns to go, and he’s suddenly, incomprehensibly afraid of being alone.

“Carter.”

She glances back.

“You’re really somethin’, you know that?”

“Well, yes.” She smiles brightly. “But you could do with telling me more often.”

Bucky grins and Peggy shuts the door.

He looks at the Time Stone.

 

 


	30. epilogue/

**(2018/19)**

“Thank you for this.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Sharon.”

“Yeah, I kinda do.” She smiles, tucking her hair behind one ear. It’s a familiar gesture, even separated by 230 miles and played out over a phone screen. Steve clears his throat awkwardly.

“I’d have done it anyway.”

“Well, call it a favor.”

“It’s not like visiting with your great-aunt is a chore.”

“Believe me, if I could be there instead of this work party, I would.”

Steve’s pencil pauses its meandering journey across his sketchbook. When he looks down at the curve of the cheek on the page, he realizes he’d been drawing his mother. His mouth tips softly. “Co-workers that bad, huh?”

Sharon, done with her makeup, turns off the bathroom light. “There’s this one guy, Brock Rumlow? Complete asshole. You’d punch him within three seconds of meeting him.”

“I’ve been told I punch everyone within three seconds of meeting them.”

“You didn’t punch Sam.”

“I tried to lap him and ended up in the hospital.”

“Are you asking me which one’s worse?”

Sharon sets her phone down on the coffee table. Steve can hear her rummaging in her purse over the soft, syrupy sound of Judy Garland. He’s got a great view of the Christmas tree in the corner of her apartment, as immaculately put together as she is. He glances up at the Charlie Brown number he and Sam had pulled out of the back of the Boy Scout’s lot last week and duct taped into the corner by his windows. Its lights blink valiantly.

“He invited you to Christmas dinner, didn’t he?” Her voice is distant.

“Yeah. I’m heading over after I drop by Shady Acres.”

Sharon reappears. “Good.”

“Good,” he repeats. She shakes her head ruefully.

“Merry Christmas, Steve.”

“Merry Christmas, Sharon.”

 

“She’s having a good day,” the nurse tells him at the door. “She kept the whole room entertained during dinner—did you know she used to be some sort of secret agent?”

“You don’t say.”

“Yes! All the way back in World War II.”

“Well, she is 97.”

The nurse winks as she opens the door and says, over-loud, “But doesn’t look a day over 80!”

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Linda,” Peggy calls back.

“Visiting hours end at ten,” Nurse Linda tells him before shutting the door. Unsupervised, Steve liberates the Holiday Nog from where it’d been hidden underneath his jacket, loose enough on his scrawny frame to hide the bottle’s damning shape.

“Did you bring libations, Mr. Rogers?”

“I did, Agent Carter.”

“Good man.”

“Sorry Sharon couldn’t make it up from Langley.”

Peggy, standing at the foot of her bed, waves the comment away. “I’m not the type of aunt who holds holidays over her niece’s head—though when she called and told me _you_ were coming, I can’t say I wasn’t pleasantly surprised. I felt for sure you would have better plans.”

“I couldn’t leave my best girl alone on Christmas.”

Peggy arches an eyebrow, plucking the wrinkles that carve trails across her face.

“I’m going to Sam’s after,” Steve admits, making the journey down the abbreviated hallway into her room, mostly a horrible medical bed set up with an old knit blanket and several flat pillows. Pictures soften the ugly, off-white walls: Peggy shaking hands with JFK, Peggy bouncing Sharon on one knee, Peggy making an exaggerated face at the camera next to a toddler-sized Tony Stark.

“Excellent,” she declares, watching Steve clear a small space among the pill bottles on her nightstand for the eggnog. There are five more pictures on it: a portrait Steve had smudged in charcoal on one of his visits; one of Sharon on graduation day; a recent selfie with Tony; an old wedding photo; and a black-and-white, the man frozen inside standing at half-cocked ease, dangling a bundle of rope in one hand and holding the strap of his rifle in the other.

Peggy catches him staring. "Admiring my husband, I see.”

Steve doesn’t correct her. “Do you miss him?” he asks instead, digging around for some cups.

“Always. But it is true, what they say—that things get easier with time.” She shakes her head, smiling fondly. “Did I ever tell you about the time Gabe was shot in the arse?”

 

“—Christine Everhart, here at the site of the Stark Expo in Queens and joine d by the CEO of Stark Industries, Ms. Pepper Potts. Ms. Potts, this is the first Stark Expo without the presence of company founder Howard Stark, who passed away in his sleep this past summer—was there any hesitation in planning this even because of that?”

“None at all, Christine. Howard loved innovation, and he loved what this Expo stood for.”

“The junior Mr. Stark told _The New York Times_ earlier this week that, and I quote, ‘Dad would want the show to go on.’ Would you say this characterizes your mindset going into tonight’s festivities?”

“Ha, yes, well, I wouldn’t put it quite so callously, perhaps, but we at Stark Industries do feel that we have a continuing responsibility to introduce new and affordable technology to the public that will hopefully help save a lot of lives.”

“This year marks the third year of your partnership with Wakanda Industries and their Wakanda Design Group. Has there been any resistance to this partnership among company heads, especially after the death of CEO T’Chaka from a heart attack?”

“No, not at all. We are so fortunate to have cultivated this relationship, and T’Challa is as excellent a leader as his father. The slogan of Wakanda Industries is, ‘Innovation through continual improvement,’ and we actually took it for the theme of this year’s event. You’ll see a lot of familiar items that have been upgraded to better functionality through Stark and Wakanda technology.”

“Now, Ms. Potts, before I leave—am I allowed to ask about the ring?”

“You are most certainly allowed to ask, but, as always, I am not required to answer.”

“Well, at least I can say I tried—Ms. Potts, it’s been a pleasure, as always. “

“Thank you, Christine.”

“That was CEO of Stark Industries, Ms. Pepper Potts. The Stark Expo is scheduled to open at midnight tonight with a special ceremony commemorating the new year.”  

 

“I can’t believe you ditched your brother’s party to come to this nerd fest.”

“ _Cocktail_ party,” Shuri corrects. Sam rolls his eyes and continues his not-so-subtle sweep of the crowd milling on the front steps of the Expo, shoving his hands into his pockets. Steve, buried three coats deep, shoves his nose into the red and blue scarf T’Challa had gotten him for Christmas.

“He doesn’t mind,” he tells Shuri. “Especially since he heard Claire might be coming with a few of her Hell’s Kitchen buddies—”

“Shut up,” Sam warns.

Steve grins, then glances back at the bright lights and sharp lines of the Expo. “Speaking of, where’s Peter?”

“You guys can’t embarrass me in front of him, ok?” Shuri fiddles with the ends of her braids. “I mean it. Just because you volunteered to chaperone—”

“We’re your cool uncles,” Steve reassures her. Sam snorts.

“Nu-uh. You’re like a wine mom.”

“Hilarious.”

“Shuri, how could we possibly embarrass you?” Sam blows on his fingers, air puffing in a cloud around his face. “I only have about three hundred of your baby pictures on my phone courtesy of your brother, that’s definitely not enough to ruin your reputation—”

“ _Stop it_.”

“Oh, hey, Shuri!”

She twirls, face abruptly melting into a smile. “Peter!”

“This is, uh, pretty cool, huh?” The kid gestures at the entrance. He’s lanky, with a sincere face and a quick smile. He holds out his hand. “Hi, sirs, I’m Peter. Peter Parker.”

“Steve Rogers.” Steve grips his hand. “You get here ok?”

“Oh, yeah, my Aunt May dropped me off—we live close by.”

“You’re from Queens?”

“Yes, sir.” 

Steve smirks. “Brooklyn.”

“And I’m Sam, from Harlem—let’s get this show on the road, folks.” He slaps Peter on the back. “We promise we’ll stay five feet away at all times.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Cool. Ok,” Peter nods sincerely, and Shuri hits him on the shoulder.

“ _Not_ cool,” she amends, shooting them a glare. Steve exchanges a glance with Sam. They both nod.

“Three feet.”

“Yeah, three feet is definitely good.”

“Have to keep room for Jesus.”

“And us, his apostles.”

Shuri drops her head into her hands with a groan.

 

Steve winds up on hot chocolate duty forty-five minutes in.

The cart’s on the outskirts of the stage where Tony Stark is currently modeling the latest in hover car technology. Steve gives up trying to peer over the too-tall crowd and settles into line, resorting to people watching the crowd clustered around the high-topped tables: a family of five, two of the kids passed out in their strollers; three teenagers laughing obnoxiously at some inside joke; a redhead with razor cheekbones who meets his eyes.

Steve stares. Her bangs cut across her forehead, framing her shrewd, mischievous eyes. She’s watching him over the shoulder of her blonde companion, long enough that she has time to raise an eyebrow in a smirk and lift her hot chocolate. _Cheers_.

Steve flushes, turning away, but not before he sees her companion frown behind him: an amiable, flustered-looking guy with a bandage across his nose and one black eye. A service dog is gnawing on a slice of pizza at his feet.

“Captain America.”

Steve jerks sideways, away from a man suddenly examining the meager offerings of the hot chocolate cart’s menu from a spot near his shoulder. Something about his well-groomed facial hair and the distinguished gray near his temples is at odds with his sweatshirt and jeans, with the heavy, eye-shaped amulet hanging around his neck. He doesn’t seem to care.

“Uh, sorry, I think you have the wrong,” Steve glances behind him, but the redhead is busy signing something to her companion, “person?”

“Ah,” the newcomer rasps. “I see. Well, here you are, in line to buy,” he squints, “a Jalapeño cheese-filled pretzel.”

“Hot chocolate, actually.” Steve pushes his glasses up his nose. “Uh, do you—can I help you?”

“Just curious.” He turns to go but stops abruptly. “Oh, yes, I almost forgot—should you ever need my assistance again.”

He hands over a surprisingly thick business card on creamy paper. Steve frowns at the spidery scrawl across the front, just a number and a street, but when he looks back up with a question sitting on his tongue the man is gone and the line is moving. He pockets it, trying to figure out why the guy looked sort of familiar.

Must be the goatee. It reminded him of Stark’s.

Steve buys four hot chocolates, clutching the edge of the paper tray in one hand and tugging out his cellphone with the other. He drifts through the crowd, thumbing through the screens to Sam’s unflattering contact photo so he can—

Steve runs into something, or something runs into Steve. Either way, he falls.

“ _Oof_ ,” he manages, as two-thirds of the hot chocolate spills across his jackets.

“Oh, shit. Shit, I’m sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going—”

Steve is inordinately grateful to have saved his phone from extinction. “No, it’s me, I wasn’t looking where I was—”

“Here, let me—”

Steve takes the proffered hand and is pulled easily to his feet. He drips onto the concrete and then looks up.

The man is a study in expression under artfully coiffed hair. Stubble inches across the bottom half of his face, the cleft in his chin. His bright, mercury eyes dance as he asks, “Can I buy you another drink?”

“I’m Steve,” Steve says dumbly, which isn't an answer. The guy smiles.

“Bucky.”

Steve smiles back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _—ba-dum, ba-dum,_ _ba-dum,_ _ba-dum,_ _ba-dum,_ _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba—_

Somewhere in space, a mad titan smiles.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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>  [tumblr.](http://dreamsalittlebigger.tumblr.com/)


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